Troubled Teens Resources

As I was a reading a success story about a troubled teen, there was a phrase that jumped out. It was, “go after jobs (you want), not just that ones that are advertising in the paper”. Wow, that is excellent advice for anyone, not just troubled teens. It goes right along side of the expression “life is what you make it, so go for it!”.(I don’t remember who I heard that from).  All too often we limit ourselves or forget to think outside the box. We’re all guilty of it at some points in our lives.

A large part of a child and teens learning come from not only personal experiences, but the observations and examples of adults, mainly authority figures in their lives (ie. parents, professionals, etc). If they see us grownups limiting ourselves, they will learn the same.

Teenagers need to be encouraged to find their interests and goals, then pointed in the right direction how to get there.  In an article I read, one troubled teen who was reflecting back, made the comment, “I had no goals, no structure, no motivation. I didn’t think there was anything I could do. I didn’t know what was out there. I got bored and got into trouble. Now a world of opportunities has been opened up to me and I can’t believe I didn’t know about this before.”

Be sure to explore our entire website to learn more about troubled teens.

“Cognitive rehabilitation does not assume that individuals start with any motivation to change. Creating conscious choice is the heart of motivating antisocial offenders to change. The program challenges children to make a conscious choice and to accept full responsibility for that choice. Giving choice and acknowledging that they have the potency to make such choices is empowering. It changes the dimensions of the situation, acknowledging potency rather than attempting to control. The understanding of what to change, how to change, and the motivation to change will lead to the ultimate goal of the program: reduction of antisocial behavior. This goal will not be achieved in everyone who completes the program. Cognitive change is self-change.”
(Source)

The Power of Choice

A friend of mine went through a year of chemotherapy. It’s not like she was ever in denial about her cancer, but she spent a great deal of anger that it was sharing a body with her. She signed up for a seminar that had a focus on changing perceptions, thus changing your life. A generally sound principle. One of the exercises involved offering a participant a choice between two identical candy bars.

“But they are the same - there is nothing to choose.”

“But you have to choose.”

“No I don’t because there is nothing to choose.”

“But then, isn’t that your only choice?

Now whatever this exercise was supposed to achieve, my friend took it to heart. She decided to apply the same principle to her cancer. She chose it. Now it goes without saying that her continued good health -10 plus years in remission - had nothing to do with that exercise, but my friend is convinced that choosing her cancer and working within that choice was pivotal. It gave her the power instead of the cancer. If she chose her cancer, then she would learn how to live with the choice. And she has. She had undergone a type of cognitive rehabilitation.

Cognitive Self Change

There is no use placing your at-risk teen in a boarding school or boot camp if it does not teach your teenager new paradigms, provide a new lens with which to view their world, a different way to think about life.

Tipton Academy for Boys is a boarding school for out-of-control teens that employs “Cognitive Self Change”, providing yet another tool by which a troubled teen can regain power over his own life again.