Troubled Teens Resources

Something parents never imagine doing is raising their grandchildren. But teen age drug abuse doesn’t live in a vacuum. Often irresponsible behavior results in “unwanted” children that the teen can’t possibly raise. Who does? You do.

When addictions started in youth continue into adulthood, marriages fail, addictions escalate, and there seem to be more and more grandparents planning how to raise a second family than planning for retirement.

“In Wisconsin, one in 10 grandparents will be the primary caregiver of a grandchild at some point in their lives, according to the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren….
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Across the country, the number of children living with grandparents with no parent in the household has grown 51 percent from 1990 to 2003, according to a UW-Extension publication on “Wisconsin Families: Issues and Demographics, Grandparents Caring for Grandchildren.”

“I think the use of drugs and alcohol, incarceration and mental health issues are all adding to that,” said Claire Culbertson, Caregiver Program coordinator for the Area Agency on Aging in Dane County…”

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“That’s why we nipped it in the bud,” Karen explained. She had just finished months of research into girls boarding schools for the next school year. Karen was very frightened that she’d be in the same position as her older sister whose daughter started using drugs as a high school freshman and was pregnant by her sophomore year. Abortion was not an option.

“I can see the writing on the wall, Karen fretted. “She gets absolutely worthless counseling at school, unless it’s from her drug friends and there are too many drugs at her school. I can’t fight this alone. At boarding school she has a fighting chance, but not in this school system.”

Don’t run the risk of ignoring your troubled teenagers self-destructive behavior. Too often the results last far longer than the span of their teen age years.

“…We don’t talk much about is the way our culture encourages girls to compete with one another at the expense of developing true, meaningful relationships with other girls, and how that simple arrangement can contribute to the way girls mistreat each other, even within so called “friendships”. I’m not talking about competition in academics or athletics. I’m talking about competing against one another for status, popularity, and the attention of boys. We train our girls from an early age, marketing make-up and sexy clothing to girls beginning in grade school, stuffing teen magazines full of articles on how to “get the guy”. Certainly our girls are not missing the message here.

What would it be like if we lived in a world where girls spent their time, energy, and talents working together instead of working against each other? Just imagine what they could accomplish….
(Source)

Indeed, just what would healthy friendships and smart relationships mean for today’s teen girls? The writer correctly points out that today’s teenage girls view each other via competitive roles instead of viewing each other as friends and allies.

Increasingly, the role models for teen girls have deteriorated into that of a teenage vamp, instructing girls in sexual one-upmanship instead of pride in achievement. Instead of respecting and encouraging each other in academics and sports, they vie for superiority in the dating scene, often being cruel to those teen girls who do not achieve popularity with the opposite sex and who show little fashion savvy.

All-girl teen boarding schools and academies are often the option concerned parents choose when discouraged and fed up with the public school’s continuing inability to influence teenagers to pursue positive paths and role models.

Girls’ academies teach a different sort of value system that can’t be often found in public schools. A system where pride of achievement and the discipline of hard work is considered meritorious, not the latest pop star styles.