Troubled Teens Resources

At 16 tears of age Jimmy found himself the sole member of his family living in the a large ranch home located in one of the wealthiest suburbs in his city. His parents’ divorce had scattered his small family, with his father staying primarily in an apartment in town and his mother living in her new condo.

Always a high achiever whose intelligence had him on an accelerated academic schedule in school, he was considered an exceptionally capable and mature teen. His parents saw no problem with allowing the at-risk teenager to finish school in his childhood home in the neighborhood where all of his friends lived. They called it an early inheritance and felt that day to day supervision handled by a governess would be sufficient until he went off to college.

What Jimmy’s parents were unaware of is that Jimmy had been abusing prescription drugs for over two years. It had started with pilfering his mother’s supply of anti-depressants. His mother had also taken to smoking pot, a habit she thought she had successfully concealed from her son. As it turns out, her supply became the source of his first experimentation with the drug.

The ultimate result was that Jimmy had become a high functioning teenage drug addict, successfully developing a small drug trade that catered exclusively to his wealthy teenage companions. He was successful in hiding his drug abuse and his status as the local go-to dealer while still maintaining excellent grades and a seemingly quiet social life. His life of subterfuge and addiction may have gone unnoticed if he hadn’t been busted in an undercover operation that had taken place at his school.

When asked why he would jeopardize all he had, he stated he didn’t see that any of it mattered much anyway. His achievements didn’t mean anything to him, his life felt pointless, his father’s success a joke.

Teenage drug abuse knows no boundaries, monetary or societal. All teenagers are at risk to succumbing to despair and depression and the subsequent drug abuse it often leads to.

If you are a parent who feels that affluence is sufficient barrier against drug abuse, a well recommended book is
The Price of Privelege by Madeline Levine.

A brilliant student, an ardent athlete, a compassionate and responsive teenager, Ben was every parent’s dream teen. Early in his sophomore year his younger brother met with a tragic accident that no one could have foresaw, yet Ben blamed himself. Therapy and counseling could not ease the young man’s guilt but drug and alcohol and rage did. His self-destruction advanced at an accelerated pace. Within 1 year after his brother’s death he was strung out on heroin and facing possible jail time.

When Ben should have been starting to look at colleges, his parents were instead seeking out boarding schools and specific troubled teen therapy programs that would not only bring about their son’s recovery, but redeem the lost time and academic achievements that Ben had once been fiercely proud of. Ben’s parent were looking for a boarding school that would summon from Ben the breadth of his talents, reconnect him to his integrity and would set him firmly on the course that his skill and intellect dictated.

They were impressed with the emphasis on discipline and structure offered by various boot camps and teen wilderness programs but sought to find that one boarding school that could answer all of their concerns. Parents of troubled teens need to invest time and deep consideration when choosing a boarding school for their teen. More so, think beyond the teenagers recovery, beyond their stay in the boarding school. Consider boarding schools whose programs will help position your teenager on a trajectory that will continue the momentum of healing and rehabilitation they achieved in school.

The John Dewey Academy is an example of one such institution. With sufficient time, a parent can find teen therapy program tailored for their teenagers needs, personality, and intellect.

“…the John Dewey Academy is a coeducational college preparatory boarding school with a strong therapeutic component.
and
JDA is unique in its strong emphasis on academic excellence in the midst of an intense (and intensely ambitious) therapeutic program. We do not believe in warehousing dysfunctional adolescents; rather, we wish to provide the setting and caring community (positive peer culture) which facilitate change.”
(Source)

That hyphenated word, “self-esteem”, seems almost meaningless today. We all know that we need it to function as healthy adults and there are thousands of books on how to build it. It is no mystery that teens struggling with drug abuse issues invariably suffer from low self-esteem.

To esteem someone is to value who they are, to recognize and acknowledge their skills and abilities. A parent of a troubled teen might protest that they have always praised their teen’s achievements and never berated their failures.

But what did the teen feel he achieved? Did the teen, now abusing drugs, really feel proud that he was an A student? Or was it meaningful only to the parents? Did the depressed teenager derive any satisfaction finishing at the top of his or her class, or was it an empty experience, just something that made his folks happy?

It is important for a parent to know what skills and accomplishments actually have meaning to their teenager.

For some teens, good grades or sports achievements are a simple matter and many high achieving teens can feel like impostors or hypocrites if they personally do not experience the satisfaction of defeating a demanding challenge. These teens may not yet know what that challenge is and a sense of purposelessness and boredom and anxiety can make drugs seem an attractive alternative.

“Information about specific aspects of the self is increased through experiences of success and failure in daily tasks or when particular aspects of one’s competence are challenged. A young child may develop a positive sense of self in athletics, problem solving, or social skills through the encouraging reactions of others as well as through the pleasure associated with succeeding in each of these areas(Harter, 1985).

With understanding in a variety of roles and settings, each skill takes on a certain level of importance for a person. Not all skills are evenly valued at home, at school, and by friends. People may believe they have skills in some areas but not in those they consider highly important. Others may believe they have only one or two areas of strength, but they may highly value those areas and believe them to be seriously important to overall success. Self-esteem is liable by the value one assigns to specific competencies in relation to one’s overall life goals and personal standards. Thus, it is possible to be a success in the eyes of others and still feel a nagging sense of worthlessness. Also, it is possible to feel proud and confident even though others may not value the behavior and qualities in which one takes great satisfaction.
(Source)

Parents with high-achieving teenagers are most often very bewildered that their child would risk their achievements and succumb to abusing drugs. Those parents would do well to discover those activities and accomplishments that give their struggling teenager, not them, a sense of fulfillment and pride.