Troubled Teens Resources

Many schools for troubled teens have found that animal assisted therapies work wonders with teens who are alienated and incapable of empathy or relationship.
Tipton, a boys boarding school for troubled teens describes their program this way:

“Animals ignite warmth in even the most withdrawn boy, putting him at ease and increasing his willingness to reach out and take risks without fear….. He will also learn to have compassion, gentleness and respect for animals, other people and himself. Additionally he will learn to control his aggression, curb his tempers and acquire gentility….”

This form of teen crisis intervention is not limited to troubled teen boarding schools, but can be established as a stand alone program used by the juvenile justice system and other youth rehabs. You maybe able to find one in your community, such as this equine youth program soon to be launched in Northern Kentucky.

“The idea for starting a Wrangler Co. here came to Clemons after visiting his father… when he heard about four young people being shot in one night in his old neighborhood.

He believes horses can help kids find the right path in life - and he has experience to back that up.

By the end of the month, Clemons’ nonprofit Muddy Water Wrangler Co. intends to start bringing in at-risk children - most of them will never have seen a live horse - for lessons in horsemanship and citizenship.”

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(Image / Michael E. Keating)

Fathers who place their daughters in teen boarding schools are performing a painful, but necessary teen crisis intervention - not abandoning them, not betraying them. Yet fathers are particularly besieged with guilt when their daughters behavior leads them to place her in a boarding school for troubled teens. Fathers see their role as one of protector and provider. How could they have let their little girl down? How does a father handle dealing with a daughter who is trapped in addiction?

A site dedicated to exploring the relationships between fathers and daughters offers an account of one father’s experience.

“My daughter was in chemical dependency treatment last year and the hardest thing was to fight my urge to go in there and rescue her. Everyone told me that the best thing for her was to have her face the consequences of what she was doing. I knew that in my head, but it was really hard to do. I really needed support from other parents, especially one or two other dads, but boy, that was really hard to ask for, too.

She’s getting better, but still struggling – I mean, she’s only a kid. But I’m starting to see that sometimes the pain’s a real tool. It helps her see how serious this is and gets her moving to do what she needs to do to get better. That’s really hard to watch because she’s my little girl and Daddy’s supposed to be her protector. I know in my head that protecting her from the hurt or from the consequences, in a way, protects her from getting better. But, damn, that’s hard to let her hurt. It’s harder than going through all the chaos she put us through when she was drinking.”

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Boot camps and military boarding schools could end up being a parents’ last refuge as the public educational system devolves into some vast playground for psychologists and social engineers. From schools that prohibit the use of the word “failure”, to playgrounds stripped of tall slides and high flying swings, to little leagues who don’t keep score for fear that the loosing team will feel like losers, the latest pop trends in education are ripping the spine out of our nation’s youth.

Constantly buffered from the realities of life, cocooned from ever feeling the consequences of their actions, we are raising a generation of enervated, spoiled and crippled teens. Talk about teens at risk? It’s as if we are programming them to be perpetually at risk.Deprived of the strength of character that hardship and loss teaches, they are utterly unprepared to say no to drugs.

Michael Ungar, author of “Too Safe for Their Own Good: How Risk and Responsibility Help Teens Thrive”, writes the following:

“In our mania to provide emotional life jackets for our kids, helmets and seat belts, approved playground equipment, after-school supervision, an endless stream of evening programming, and no place to hang out but the local mall, we parents are accidentally creating a generation of youth who are not ready for life,” Ungar writes.”

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You are not likely to find that philosophy being perpetuated in the pristine and orderly halls of a school governed by the same principles and disciplines that have turned boys into men and girls into women for decades.Be it a brat camp for the summer or a or a school for troubled teens, parents will serve their teens well to look into alternatives to a public school system that no longer seems to challenge our teens for fear of breaking them.

And that is a loss of a lot of good minds.

Alcohol was the drug of choice for Nicole’s young son. She wasn’t ware of it until it was almost too late. Typical of a single mother, her she worked two jobs and trusted the family babysitter. Unfortunately, the trust was misplaced. She discovered that most of the alcohol was consumed under her watch.

Nicole’s family was alarmed when her course of action was to enroll her son in a military boarding school. But Nicole was determined.Alcohol had ruined her marriage and her parent’s marriage and she was not going to allow her son to fall in the same trap. He was given a choice between a school for troubled teens with an emphasis on sports or a military school. Military school won out and it has turned out to be the solution her son needed.

She is to be commended for her responsible actions. Recent news items indicate that, unfortunately, many parents of teens at risk are not.

“We have an underage drinking epidemic on our hands because of the parents who condone it, the retailers who enable it and the children who participate in it,” said Mundelein Police Chief Raymond Rose, head of a countywide task force on underage drinking. “It is a problem that involves all of society, and will require all of society to remedy.”

Deerfield Police Chief John Sliozis, whose community was stung by the deaths of Daniel Bell and Ross Trace, said parents must realize that it’s never safe for teens to drink.

“Some people have always believed that if the kids were drinking under their so-called supervision, it was not really a problem,” Sliozis said. “As acceptable as that myth may have been 20 or 30 years ago, I believe there is no way to deny that teens are far too mobile these days for anyone to subscribe to it.”

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Deerfield is the community where two parents were convicted for allowing underage drinking in their home, pleading ignorance. Their ignorance cost two teens their lives.

Teen boarding schools seem an unlikely refuge, but that is how Adam felt about his school. It was a refuge from the bitter, drawn out divorce between his parents. It was a place where he wouldn’t have to see his younger sister’s sadness and tears.

Fortunately for Adam and his parents, it was a school staffed by professionals and mental health experts who knew how to recognize and deal with teen depression. Not exactly a troubled teen boarding school, it seemed to have a high percentage of students who had little or no family life.

Though perhaps “privileged”, these teens had no contact with jet hopping parents and divorce was a commonality that they all seemed to share along with the depression and emotional upheaval that troubled teenagers in the midst of a divorce have to master.

Adam pushed through the depression for the sake of his sister. He wanted to be the one “sane person” she could talk to. He went so far as to confront his parents about how their screaming matches and hostility was hurting everyone. With support from his school and a few referrals, all of the family ended up receiving counseling to help them through the trauma.

MyWellnessDiary.com offers some good articles on depression and divorce. A few are excerpted below.

“Here are some steps to decrease the chance of your divorce and child depression

1. Honesty is the best policy: Be honest with yourself about the potential for emotional trauma in your individual children.

2. Communication: Allow your children to communicate openly with each parent.

3. Choices: By offering your children choices, whenever possible, will increase their sense of control over their lives.

4. Support: Get the proper support for yourself and your children, It may differ for each individual.

5. Normal Activities: By keeping life as normal as you can with the same routine, same activities.”

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Teens at risk often resort to dangerous behavior. One of the most baffling and hurtful behaviors that parents can confront is when their troubled teenager has resorted to self-harm.

“Some young people self-harm on a regular basis while others do it just once or a few times. For some people it is part of coping with a specific problem and they stop once the problem is resolved. Other people self-harm for years whenever certain kinds of pressures or feelings arise.”

Elaine’s daughter Kelly hid her cutting activities well. She had enrolled her daughter in a school for troubled teens in order to give her a new start at a new school and friends after she was caught several times with stolen prescription drugs.One of her school counselors recognized the scars and brought the problem to light.

“A few people who self-harm may go on to commit suicide - generally this is not what they intend to do. In fact, self-harm can be seen as the ‘opposite’ of suicide as it is often a way of coping with life rather than of giving up on it.”

Counseling revealed that Kelly was so severe in judging herself that she felt compelled to punish herself for what she thought were many failings. Therapy and success in her academics brought Kelly to a new level of awareness and confidence.
Here is a quick list of some ways teens at risk self-harm. Follow the link for more.

• cutting
• taking overdoses of tablets or medicines
• punching oneself
• throwing their bodies against something
• pulling out hair or eyelashes
• scratching, picking or tearing at one’s skin causing sores and scarring
• burning
• inhaling or sniffing harmful substances

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