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In Reply to: Re: TF in Uganda posted by Perry on March 06, 2008 at 16:21:56:
What I saw in the Teen Training videos was a stunning lack of spontaneity, which said a lot more to me than the forced smiles. Lack of spontaneity is harder to see in TF's still photos. However, if you look at a "normal" family's collection of photos, there are always a number of pictures of the kids that are not staged or posed. The picture albums of Rick & Techi are remarkable for the number of posed shots. The poses look natural, but the kids pretty much had to stand still and play to the camera to get shots that were in focus with no blinking eyes, no heads turned away, no dirty faces, no bedhead hair, etc.
Some people are impressed with highly controlled kids as being "well behaved." From an abuse/neglect assessment standpoint, we're trained to look for the extremes--overly controlled kids who are constantly looking for external cues to guide what they do or say are just as suspect as wild, out-of-control kids with no respect for authority.
I don't know how much this applies to people in TF where public relations and impression management is a major survival skill, but very often when you look at photo collections from abusive families, you will see "blanks" in the historic record. For example, if Jane was being molested between the ages of 7 and 9, you might find very few, if any, pictures of Jane during this period of her life.
