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<blockquote data-quote="mrsammler" data-source="post: 554479"><p>I knew several people--maybe as many as 10 or more--during my army stint who had enlisted in order to stop being a difficult child and try to "fix" their lives via submitting themselves to military discipline. I guess I would include myself in that number, although I wasn't a full-on difficult child so much as a rowdy partier who was immature & decadent and needed some serious discipline to get my act together. The army experience seemed to work well for all of us--almost everyone who enlisted for this purpose was pretty much "fixed" by the end of basic training (3 months) and those I knew after basic seemed, like me, to stay fixed. And this bears out what others are saying here: a difficult child won't stop until he/she truly wants to stop, and then often he/she will find or create whatever apparatus they need to help them stop. Certainly enlisting in the military service is a very clear sign that a difficult child is ready to change, wants to change, and is willing to do whatever it takes to change.</p><p></p><p>The sad thing is that most difficult children, by the time they finally get to that place, have so damaged their reputations via criminal records and the like that the military services won't have them. And it doesn't work if the kid didn't enlist for the specific purpose of "fixing" his life: I have a really worthless family member who enlisted, did 2 tours of combat overseas, and then, while stateside, massively malfunctioned on Bath Salts, went AWOL repeatedly, and was drummed out of the service. He's been consistently worthless ever since, which was pretty much what he was before his enlistment. So while a military enlistment *often* works, it doesn't *always* work. Again, motivation is probably the key differentiator.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="mrsammler, post: 554479"] I knew several people--maybe as many as 10 or more--during my army stint who had enlisted in order to stop being a difficult child and try to "fix" their lives via submitting themselves to military discipline. I guess I would include myself in that number, although I wasn't a full-on difficult child so much as a rowdy partier who was immature & decadent and needed some serious discipline to get my act together. The army experience seemed to work well for all of us--almost everyone who enlisted for this purpose was pretty much "fixed" by the end of basic training (3 months) and those I knew after basic seemed, like me, to stay fixed. And this bears out what others are saying here: a difficult child won't stop until he/she truly wants to stop, and then often he/she will find or create whatever apparatus they need to help them stop. Certainly enlisting in the military service is a very clear sign that a difficult child is ready to change, wants to change, and is willing to do whatever it takes to change. The sad thing is that most difficult children, by the time they finally get to that place, have so damaged their reputations via criminal records and the like that the military services won't have them. And it doesn't work if the kid didn't enlist for the specific purpose of "fixing" his life: I have a really worthless family member who enlisted, did 2 tours of combat overseas, and then, while stateside, massively malfunctioned on Bath Salts, went AWOL repeatedly, and was drummed out of the service. He's been consistently worthless ever since, which was pretty much what he was before his enlistment. So while a military enlistment *often* works, it doesn't *always* work. Again, motivation is probably the key differentiator. [/QUOTE]
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