Avram:
Long comment. Many responses. Will separate them so that the mods can post them, and dialogue can continue.
You wrote: “This is nonsensical. If my car is continually ramming a barrier, it’s not because the highway administration randomly put a guardrail up for my car to crash into. It’s because my car is veering off the road.”
Precisely my point. If boundaries are taught properly earlier, they have become ingrained. If there is ramming, there is a problem. The car that keeps veering into the guardrail needs to be reguided. The barrier might prevent from going off the cliff or into the ditch. But it does not constitute guidance or chinuch. And it does not create a safer highway.
You wrote: “I think, unfortunately, that the majority of OTD issues arise within the influence of a toxic peer culture…”
Sometimes happens, but this is a real minority. Most kids that go OTD are running nowhere, looking for somewhere they feel accepted. They are on the escape. Talk to anyone who works with these kids. Yes, the OTD culture accepts them. But why are they running away from a life we know to be so rich with spirituality, moral value, and closeness to HKB”H? The answer to this question is as individual as facial appearance. כשם שאין פרצופיהם שונות. These kids are not attracted to leave the fold. They are running from it, and the “bad friends” welcome them. Those bad friends were once in the same situation.