Troubled Teens Resources

Parents researching schools for troubled teens are naturally apprehensive. How to discern good advice from bad, how to determine which programs being offered are appropriate for their teen’s issues? Should the school be close to home, or far away? What will their insurance cover? How often will they see their teens? Is there follow up?

Teen Options offers an informative podcast that will help parents sort through their options. In fact, all of Troubled Teen Resource’s sites are replete with information for parents of troubled teens. But how do you evaluate the staff? These are the people who will study the teens in their charge in order to motivate, counsel and instruct them. What constitutes a good leader for youth?

Just so happens, I’ve run into some suggestions for that answer:

“…the five characteristics present in those who most effectively work with young people:

• they see genuine potential in youth.
• They put youth at the center of their programs.
• They believe they can make a difference with youth.
• They feel they are contributing to the community something they owe.
• They are “unyieldingly authentic.”

(source)

Having worked with youth, and long ago, having been one of those youth who were “worked with”, I can vouch for the desirability of the above traits. Authenticity can permeate even the most determined defenses. Teens may yet resist what they are being taught, but they have an instinct for detecting hypocrisy, at least they do when they take measure of those who will tell them how they need to live.

Likewise, passion for youth is almost mandatory, and you’ll find evidence of that passion in the resumes of the counselors and teachers at professionally staffed schools.