I reccomend you read through "Terminology" first. You wont understand much without knowing the language.

The troubled teen industry- also known as the TTI, is a network of private programs that involve therapeutic boarding schools, residential treatment centers, wilderness programs, and behavior modification schools that claim to help struggling youth but really operate with no oversight or accountability. These programs frequently present themselves as therapeutic while relying on control, isolation, punishment, and lack of communication with the parents and outside world to force compliance. Education is also part of the deception. Students have been given unofficial plans like IAPs instead of legally protected IEPs which creates the appearance of support without any real rights or safeguards for the student or the family. The people behind these programs don't educate the parents on the difference of IAP's and IEP's. Parents are reassured through professional-looking paperwork, while students experience emotional harm, academic neglect, and restricted contact with the outside world (and in some cases physical and sexual abuse). The TTI thrives on secrecy and misinformation, allowing serious harm to happen behind closed doors under the guise of help. Parents are often victims of this system as well. Many are targeted during moments of fear, and are pressured by the educational consultants with worst-case scenarios about what could happen to their child if they don’t comply. They are encouraged to trust the program’s “experts” and education consultants with a private agenda over their own instincts and at times over their own children. By withholding information, limiting communication, and using misleading educational paperwork, the troubled teen industry isolates families from the truth. This separation protects the program—not the child—and keeps parents invested in a system that is harming their family while convincing them it is the only solution. Every family's situation is different, but they know what to say and how to use their parents worst fears against them.

This website was started because I wanted to make a reference sheet for a friend who was doing a podcast on the subject. It started out as the list of punishments given and why, which turned into another page dedicated to terminology, and that turned into what they did and didn't share with our parents. Sit back and enjoy the trauma.