Teen Crisis Intervention

With the economy struggling like it is, finding affordable help for a troubled teen can be a difficult task.  The least expensive placement options for a troubled teen begin at $2,500 per month.   For parents that have difficulty financing such a venture there are some alternative options they can try. One good option for younger children up to about 12 or 13 years old is a scared straight type program.  It is designed to empower parents by allowing their child to watch a DVD of a drill Sergeant.  This is been successful in motivating younger people to improve their behaviors.  It can be found at http://www.bootcampvideo.com/ .

There are other options parents can try on their own prior to sending their child away.  Some parents have had success using what is referred to as a ‘home contract”.  This is just what it sounds like, a contract between the parents and their child.  The parents negotiate an agreement with their child about what time they will come home, who they will hang out with, what kind of grades they will get, and drug testing is usually in the mix.  Both parties sign it and the teen understands and agrees what will happen if he doesn’t comply with the agreement.  Some parents will use this prior to placing their teen in a program for troubled teens.

There is another great option for parents that do not want to send their teen away to receive help.  It is advertised on television and is a very effective option.  The Total Transformation program can be purchased by following this link.  The program is guaranteed to work and you can actually try the program for $19.95 risk free!  If you have a troubled or defiant teen or child and want to try something that will help; give this a try.

Thinking about a teen crisis intervention for your troubled teen? What are you going to do after you confront your teen about their problem? What type of treatment do they need? Well there is a new option for parents of teen boys ages 13-17 in Austin, TX. This program of individualized therapy offers a different type of help for teens.

“‘Every teenage boy we work with has an individualized program created to best suit their personal needs to foster a positive environment. Our programs have been developed to enhance all areas of each troubled teen lives and help them learn to adapt to situations where they need additional help. Resolution Ranch strives to help troubled teens build stronger relationships in their communities as well as to succeed in life,- states Neal Staab, Administrator of Resolution Ranch.
Resolution Ranch’s 12 Step Program offers a spiritual focus to help troubled teens learn respect, build character and confidence. Each boy works through the 5 levels of achievement until they are ready to resume their lives in the outside world with strengthened coping capabilities.
At Resolution Ranch teens develop positive self-evaluation and introspection skills. At each learning level, boys take part in an activity or response writing that is read and evaluated by a counselor. As Level 1 Ranch Hands new boys learn respect, awareness and honesty. Level 2 Cattle Men focus on learning goal setting, confidence and responsibility. Level 3 Ropers learn humility, resolve and character building. Level 4 Wranglers work on helpfulness, relationship building, dealing with change, and making amends. Level 5 Cowboys learn about hope, affirmation and commitment.
As each boy works on his individual goals, feedback from the group builds confidence and commitment to recovery. Group therapy sessions allow feelings to be openly expressed in a nurturing environment. A “group” can be called at any time by any member of the community. Peer affirmation and evaluation helps teens counter negative behaviors and reinforce positive behaviors.”

If you are looking for help for a troubled teen visit

this link.
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Troubled Teen Options

Once a family has decided that they can no longer control their teen, they begin searching for ways to deal with the defiant youth.  There are several avenues that distressed parents usually use.  Most parents will typically attempt one or all of these listed below:

            “You’re going to stay with your Grandma.”

This option may seem like a good idea, since Grandma raised the teen’s parent and everything seemed to turn out ok.  The problem with this logic is after the newness of the visit with Grandma wears off, the teen begins to treat Grandma like he or she did the parent.  Another problem with this option is the teen will eventually need to go to school.  When the teen gets to school he will find new negative friends to replace the old ones he has been hanging with.  The majority of the time this option ends in the child hating the Grandparents as much as he does his parents.

            “You’re going to see a therapist”

This option makes sense; the teen obviously has some type of problem he is not dealing with.  While this may be true, any kind of counseling or therapy requires a willing participant.  Many times the youth will convince the Therapist how bad he has it, and in some cases the Therapist even takes the teen’s side.  Sometimes the teen will manipulate the Therapist and try to run up a therapy bill for their parents.  There have even been instances where a teen has convinced the therapist that his parents are the ones that need help.

            “You’re grounded”

When teens negative behaviors start to manifest themselves most parents will revert to the punishment they grew up with and ground their child.  This worked for them; maybe it will work for their child.  In most households of today both parents work, leaving the defiant teen on the “honor system” to stay at home until they get home from work.  The problem with this are fairly obvious, if the child is smoking pot, cutting school, and breaking the law, they will have no problem lying about coming home right after school.

            “Were checking you into the hospital”

When a teen comes home totally drunk or loaded on pot, parents are sometimes forced to take the child to the hospital.  After the crisis is over, the parents may discuss taking the child to a psychiatric hospital to be evaluated.  If the child is simply acting out negatively, and is not suicidal, this option can sometimes create more problems than it solves.  A child unnecessarily placed in a psychiatric situation will probably learn new tools to manipulate the adults in their lives.  Suicide is a very serious problem and threats must all be treated seriously.  Once a teen that has not had suicidal tendencies learns this, he may begin to threaten all of the time.  The teen may also learn how to obtain medications that he may not even need.

The decision can be a very difficult one to make.  If you would like some no cost low pressure help, give us a call at 800 781 8081 or visit us at www.teenoptions.com.

In this day and age of text messaging and virtual gaming, many teens aren’t able to develop the social skills of yesterday. This thought begs the question: Is technology crippling the upcoming generations of teens? Some say it is so.

Text messaging is a great way to notify someone if your running late for a meeting or for a simple reminder to take out the trash, but to many teens, it has become their main form of communication. Have you ever tried to call your teenager to talk to them, they don’t answer but respond with a text message of “what do ya want?” Instead of the common courtesy of a call back, they use this crutch form of communication.

Virtual gaming is a big influence on teenagers and adolescents. You can become anything you want to be and you can be successful with enough practice on the screen. Many teens who struggle with social skills find they’re comfortable with a more virtual world. Instead of working on their ability to communicate in a social setting, they opt to completely phase out reality and become a virtual warrior or soldier. School shootings and other adolescent tragedies and crimes can and have been linked to virtual gaming.

There is an epidemic in today’s America; there are more troubled teens than ever before! Technology has aided in causing this epidemic. Parents are struggling to maintain control over their defiant teens. With laws that limit a parent’s ability to discipline, some parents don’t know what to do or where to turn for help in their family crisis.

If you are struggling with a defiant teen and need help contact Troubled Teens’  at 1-866-495-840.

“…the people were different but their look was the same - missing teeth, sunken cheeks, white skin, pus-filled sores and sunken eyes.”

Teen crisis intervention has never been more urgent than the current multi-state anti-meth campaign.

The TV ads, billboards and videos highlight the radical devastation that meth administers to it’s addicts. There is no mercy with meth. Though heroin, cocaine, and crack are just as deadly, their decimating effects are not nearly so evident as those left by meth addiction.

“This one didn’t survive,” Holley said about one the addicts, pictured on the big screen.

Another woman’s face illuminated with an air of lifelessness to it, but she was actually alive and in the middle of a meth “crash” - which is a multi-day long period of rest after a long bender.

“This is day two … After I got the tube out her throat,” Holley said.

“Why does it have to be so ugly,” she asked, before explaining that addicts have “chains” around their “veins.”

Different rhymes peppered Holley’s anti-meth points.

“The high is a lie,” she told the students, because meth gives people a feeling of power and control, even though addicts lack those virtues, she said.

The percentage of high school-aged people using methamphetamine has dropped every year for 10 years, Holley told her audience.

But meth customers die, and their pushers move on to look for new clientele - like the students in Monday’s audience, Holley said.

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“Once they get in this system, it’s a meat grinder,” said W. Michael Coulson, one of about 25 court-appointed attorneys in the juvenile courts. “For the most part, they’re on a rocket sled headed for TDCJ, unless something really big steps in the way.”

The gentleman above is speaking of the fate of troubled teens who have committed adult crimes in Texas, but the same holds true for any juvenile whose crimes merit the possibility of being charged as an adult. As courts around the country struggle with the increasing number of violent youth offenders, some districts have begun executing harsher sentences, trying more juveniles as adults.

“Texas permits courts to certify juveniles as young as 15 to be tried as adults for murder and other violent crimes.

For the past decade, Harris County has prosecuted more juveniles as adults than Bexar, Dallas, Tarrant and Travis counties combined.

In 1996, Harris County certified 170 juveniles amid a public crackdown on violent youth crime. That number steadily dropped to roughly 55 a year between 2003 and 2005.”

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It makes one appreciate the necessity of early teen crisis intervention when perhaps brat camp programs or some type of training might have made the difference between continuing to break the law or choosing another path. Recently a 16 year old was sentenced to 25 years for aggravated robbery. Is that too severe?

Where do you put such teens if the juvenile system can’t rehabilitate them? It is a debate we will be seeing more and more of as court systems across the country struggle with the most effective methods of saving a teen’s life while keeping the public safe.

Teen crisis intervention typically targets troubled teens. A new program circulating through the nation targets the parents of those teens. Many parents simply have no clue what to look for beyond easily recognized drug paraphanilia, such as pipes and bongs.

Some parents are very removed from anything to do with teen drug abuse because they can’t imagine their own teens using. Word to the wise - all teens are at risk and parents need to be drug educated regardless of how confident they are that their teen is “clean”.

“The program featured a mock bedroom of a teenage drug user and around 70 items or indicators were placed throughout it. Parents had the opportunity to walk through and try to identify possible signs of drug use.

In addition the Department of Public Safety provided a teenage drug user’s car exhibit out in front of the high schools so parents could also find possible signs there too.
[…]
“Our goal is that hopefully a parent will see something during the event and a voice inside their head will be screaming to them that something is not right. Even if we just reach one parent, that could be one teen that we save,” Teresa Burnett said.

Gregory Flores, of Port Arthur, admitted he has always had little knowledge as to what drugs are out there, but feels he is not alone.

“It’s alarming. I knew kids were doing some of this. After seeing all the ways that they can hide what they are doing shows that they are smart, but we need to get them focused on being smart in school,” he said. “Parents also need to educate themselves so that they can see what is really going on.”

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Teen crisis intervention directed at the scourge of underage drinking is an ongoing campaign for parents, schools and communities. What is undeniable, though parents do not quite grasp this, is the power of parental communication.

Believe it or not, your kids are listening to you. And they are watching you. So, if you are warning them about the dangers of alcohol and drugs, yet drink and medicate yourself, you might have a problem. If you aren’t meeting your teen’s friends, communicating with their parents, or making your rules crystal clear, you might have a problem. The parent who also tries to be their teenager’s friend, will fail at both. Teens want parents.

“Parents’ ability to influence whether their children drink is well documented and is consistent across racial and ethnic groups.Verbally expressing their disapproval of drinking, setting clear rules against drinking, consistently enforcing those rules and monitoring your child’s behavior all help to reduce the likelihood of underage drinking.”

See how you do on the following test, linked below.

• Tell your child that you disapprove of underage drinking?
• Monitor teens while they are in your home?
• Talk to your teen daily?
• Set a curfew and consistently enforce house rules?
• Inquire of another parent about a gathering or party to verify safe situations and supervised homes?
• Welcome telephone calls at your home verifying supervision of gatherings at your own home?
• Check levels of open alcohol beverages in your home?
• Attempt to meet your child’s friends and their parents as their environment changes?
• Call authorities or other parents to report unsafe situations, parties or gatherings?
• Help your child figure out how to handle risky situations with a plan of action?

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Are middle school age adolescents vulnerable to the attraction of gangs? Does it really start so young? Yes, unfortunately, most teen crisis intervention has to start well before a child enters his teens, in fact, pre-teens are as vulnerable to the cultural hype as their high school counterparts. That’s why new programs for troubled teens about gang recruitment now are aimed at middle school.

“The presence of Tracy’s Gang Task Force at Monte Vista Middle School on Tuesday morning was akin to putting out a grass fire before it becomes an inferno, officials said.

While officers said that the school was far from being a hotbed of gang activity, they were quick to note that middle school years are when students are most vulnerable to being recruited by a gang.

“This is the time when they start seeing it and it starts to become normal to them. The real danger is when they feel that joining a gang is the normal thing to do,” said officer Ricardo Hernandez. “We want to get the message to them now before they hit the high school level.”

The presentation included detailed photos of gang activity and members, a drug dog demonstration and stark descriptions of what that lifestyle is really all about.

“It really hits them when they start seeing pictures of gang members here in Tracy,” Hernandez said. “Then they realize it is happening all around them and not just on television.”
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Probably the most effective teen crisis intervention is that which provides juveniles with a vision for the future and the training necessary to achieve that vision. And far better than the government underwriting the entire bill are those non-profit and corporate entities who provide the funding for programs for troubled teens in their respective communities.

Back Track in San Francisco is a good example.

“Through Back on Track, Simon and her team create collaborations with business and labor as well as the public sector. The focus is getting corporations and nonprofits to notice that there is a population of young people who want to work, but are harming themselves and their communities through low-level drug trade.

“I’ve been able to do some public education, along with (Harris), who’s really spearheading a lot of these conversations around the nation, that public safety is about providing opportunities for people to do the right thing,” she said. “It’s also about ensuring that there are consequences for folks who don’t.”

In addition to Back on Track, Simon runs the district attorney’s Changing the Odds, a summer employment and internship program for at-risk youth.”
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Some communities are blessed with program after program for troubled teens. Though it is unfortunate when a teen needs such a program, it is even more unfortunate if the community that they live in have none to offer. Parents would do well to offer support for those programs helping teenagers in their own communities. Teen drug abuse impacts the entire community through increased crime, pregnancies and broken lives.