Troubled Teens Resources

Oppositional Defiant Disorder can be so overwhelming that parents have no choice but to opt to send their child to a specialty school or schools for troubled teens that specializes with OOD teens. Imagine struggling with a child’s tantrums from toddler on through adolescence.

“At the age of of two-and-a-half, Daniel was more boisterous than a normal toddler – and it was noticed.

“He used to get so excited,” said mum, Hayley… “A normal toddler’s temper tantrum would last about five minutes. Daniel’s lasted one-and-a-half-hours.”
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“Daniel would go into one room and wreck it,” his mum recalled. “By the time I had got into that room he had done another three or four.”
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Things became so bad that the couple,…were trained in ways of restraining Daniel, now 13, for his own safety. Mrs Fletcher taught him at home – because he could not cope in mainstream school.

He wrecked a classroom at North Wootton Primary School and threatened to jump off the roof at St Edmund’s Community Foundation School… His parents came to a mutual agreement with the school for him to leave.

He is now at Eaton Hall….which caters for students with emotional and behavioural difficulties.

Daniel has the genetic condition ADHD or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder which causes behavioural and learning problems like being persistently impulsive, inattentive and defiant. He also has Oppositional Defiant Disorder, showing a pattern of negative and defiant behaviour.”

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Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is viewed as a curse and addressed as a “disease’. Is that a helpful perception or even a useful definition? Many professionals would assert that that approach is counterproductive.

“The biggest mistake I see so many parents making when it comes to ADD/ADHD and other learning disabilities is thinking that diagnosis of a learning disability and labeling of a child with the name of a “disease” somehow helps in some way! To me that is as foolish as going to the doctor and having him tell you that your child has Strep Throat without doing anything to help the child get over the infection!
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I always ask, “What is your number one strategy for dealing effectively with your situation?” Most everyone answers with a blank stare. Someone has diagnosed a problem but done little or nothing to teach compensation or adaptation skills!”

An approach often found employed at schools for troubled teens and military boarding schools is to treat ADHD as an asset to be utilized towards your troubled teenager’s advancement. As opposed to dealing with ADHD as a liability, “special need” or disease, many health professionals view it as a particularly useful tool to be mastered. Now, which approach do you think garners the better results?

“…before taking any action after suspecting that a child has ADD (or any learning disorders for that matter) you must decide what definition you are going to use to define what you are talking about.
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As a parent, the only important thing to establish is “How am I going to help my child to adapt and learn to use the abilities and capabilities that they have to be an independent and self-reliant and capable person!”

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Brat camp taught the Carter family a lesson that they hadn’t expected to learn. Their teen daughter Amy, diagnosed two years ago with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, had been having a rough time in school. Her parents reviewed all the therapies possible, including Ritalin and Adderal but opted to work with a counselor who coached Amy how to manage her ADHD through behavioral techniques and awareness therapies. Though much improvement was made, the death of a close friend threatened her stability and Amy was still struggling with deep anxiety and anger.

Brat camp seemed like a place Amy could run her energies and exasperations into the ground. The camps location in a mountain ranch seemed an idyllic setting. It proved to be more than that. It turned Amy around. Living in a big city, Amy rarely rode a bike, never climbed trees, never held a fishing pole or had a pet. She fell in love with working with the brat camp animals and felt content after the demands of long days caring for stock.

Her parents are convinced that Amy’s exposure to nature made all the difference. Experts are apt to agree with them. Amy is now happily enrolled in a troubled teen boarding school with an emphasis on agriculture and animal husbandry.

“Richard Louv, futurist and author of Last Child in the Woods; Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, says our actions — and in some cases, lack of actions — have caused our children to become alienated from the natural world, and their resulting disconnection may be contributing to increasing diagnoses of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression and childhood obesity.

Louv was the keynote speaker at the recent Outdoor Writers Association of America Conference in Roanoke, Virginia. His presentation, adapted from his book, carried a profound and deeply disturbing message, one that every outdoorsman and woman, as well as every parent, must take to heart. It boils down to this: nature, in the broad, sweeping sense of the word, fills a critical need in the human psyche, and we eliminate its influence on our children only at great risk to them and to our society as a whole.”

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Brat camp counselors know this regimen well. So do troubled teen boarding school teachers as do the many teen help professionals that promote and value instilling discipline. And about the most enjoyable way to learn discipline is through sports.

I often recall the stories an athletic coach would tell of the amazing results that he had teaching troubled teens how to harness and enhance their natural power and prowess in a gym,and especially how well martial arts succeeded in teaching that. He was not alone in his enthusiasm.

“The mystique of karate, which filtered into the United States… has a draw that western team sports, such as baseball or basketball, can’t match, said Brad Binder, a neuro-biologist..

“The main reasons go beyond the physical activity,” he said. “But that aspect is speculative. No one really knows yet.”

A sense of accomplishment is valuable for all human beings. For many teens, that experience is hard to come by. They know failure after failure, and thus, view their lives as doomed. And now it appears that mastering martial arts not only can give the troubled teen that pride, but can also give them a tool to manage ADHD.

“Because karate is fast-paced and visual, it can appeal to children with attention disorders who in the classroom might lash out but are model students on the mat, said Joe Palanzo, president of the Worldwide Kenpo Karate Association in Baltimore.

“It gives you a certain satisfaction you don’t get doing anything else,” Palanzo said.

Sometimes this success extends into the classroom, increasing a student’s concentration.

“It taught me how to sit still and avoid the distractions, how to avoid everything around me, how everything around me is blocked out,” said Larry Calcote, 13, who is diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.”

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Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder can be handled by a variety of methods. With more and more parents becoming displeased with dispensing drugs to their put of control teens, a variety of new programs have started emerging with an emphasis on behavior modification, nature and, gaining in attention, nutritional solutions.

“The quality of food we eat (or lack thereof) has a profound affect on Attention Deficit Disorder and ADHD. For many people, nutrition alone can effectively work as an ADHD alternative treatment.

A growing body of research points to nutritional deficiencies - especially with essential fatty acids and amino acids - as a contributing factor of Attention Deficit Disorder and learning deficiencies.”

Studies consistently indicate that troubled teenagers treated with Ritalin are still at high risk for teen age drug abuse and severe behavioral problems. The arguments for controlling ADHD by nutrition assert that, though not all teens respond, a sufficient number report great success, justifying that the nutritional approach be more widely encouraged.

“Fatty acids are used to make brain and nerve tissue in the body and are crucial for proper growth, mental function, the immune system and brain development. The body cannot produce the two fatty acids families, Omega-3 and Omega-6, on its own and therefore must receive these key Attention Deficit Disorder ADHD nutrition ingredients through diet and supplementation.

Although the typical Western diet is high in the Omega-6 family of fatty acids (found in corn, sunflower, canola and safflower oil, margarine, vegetable oil and shortening), most Americans young and old are highly deficient in Omega-3.”

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Before there was the Internet, Ipods and video games, when television was limited to three broadcast channels and it was safe to send your kids out “to play” for the day, we didn’t seem to hear all that much about Attention Deficit Disorders. Usually an adolescent came home too exhausted from playing ball, riding bikes and roaming the countryside to exhibit any untoward symptoms of hyper activity and cantankerous behavior.

A new study cited by Psychology Today seems to suggest that the great outdoors may be the crisis intervention needed today for teens and children diagnosed with ADD.

“For the 7 percent of American kids who suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), relief may come in the form of green fields, leafy trees and open sky.”

The studies adds strength to previous findings that indicated ADD kids improved when exposed to some “green time”.

“The study builds on the lab’s previous finding that adding grass and trees to the grounds of public housing developments is linked to fewer reports of domestic violence and stronger neighborhood ties.”

All parents of ADD teens long for any solution but drugs to “cure” the problem. That the rise of ADD coincides with the attenuated time a youth is outdoors is a correlation that needs even more study. Hard as it may be to do, a parent that can give their teens some “green time” may find the payoff to be a more peaceful and attentive teen and there could be no more benign intervention than fresh air, blue skies, and the broad, green earth.