Troubled Teens Resources

One very effective means of teen crisis intervention is peer pressure. Yes, the same peer pressure that may convince a teenager to try drugs can also convince them not to. Teens have an opportunity to apply some of that type of pressure by presiding over the sentencing of their fellow teens in teen court.

Teen courts exist all over the nation. in one variation or another. and are surprisingly effective in dealing out justice that seems to leave a lasting impression. Teen help in the form of positive peer culture is employed on a far more comprehensive level in behavioral programs in many teen boarding schools.

“The court sees between 25 and 35 defendants each year, Rutten said.

The program has shown it works, Rutten said.

Only about 3 percent of the teens who have completed the court program end up back in the Clallam County juvenile justice system…”

What the teens say, goes. Thus one teen was told to go fishing and catch “dinner” for a week for a disabled person unable to do so. One of the objectives of the program is to help an offender to develop a connection with the community, theory being that teens do not cause harm to a neighborhood that they feel a part of.

“While Rutten and DuBeau observe the court, they do not intervene as the teens hear arguments and pass sentences.

“Kids are doing sentencing; they understand the motivation of why kids did something. They understand kids’ thoughts and action.”
[…]
Teenagers volunteering for the court said they like being in charge, and they take it seriously.”
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Parents of teens at risk do not think in terms of heroin when they consider teen age drug abuse. Heroin still has it’s back alley connotations for most adults who can’t quite associate it’s presence in their teenager’s life. Unfortunately, heroin has always been a presence in teen age addiction, sometimes center stage, sometimes just one of the crowd of drugs that assemble around troubled teenagers.

However, when a teen rubs shoulders with heroin, he is usually in way over his head.

A 16-year-old Douglas High School student found unconscious remained hospitalized Tuesday at Renown Regional Medical Center.

His friends reportedly found him Saturday on the floor of a residence in the 1300 block of Petar Road in Gardnerville some 16 hours after he had apparently fallen asleep.

“Although it has yet to be identified through evidentiary testing, the opium the juveniles thought they were ingesting was most likely black tar heroin,” said sheriff’s department spokesman Sgt. Tom Mezzetta.

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Here is how UrbanDictionary.com defines black tar heroin:

“The dirtiest form of heroin. It is black and usually contains glass and other unwanted substances. It is extremely hazardous to your health and probably contains some form of brain damaging substance. It is much more harmful than regular heroin.

You must be a true addict and a moron to do Black Tar Heroin”.”

Parents need to understand that a teen can usually get any drug they are looking for if they are determined to get high. And if they can’t get what they are looking for, they may stray into the unknown with fatal consequences.

Moral: Educate yourself, educate your teens, and make sure that your teen help educate their friends.

Teen help in the service of others can develop a very important characteristic that will go far in developing self-respect as well as respect for others; empathy.

The emotionally immature person, which addicts always are, is naturally narcissistic as well. The last thing they think about is how their behavior will harm those around them and hurt their family deeply. Something as seemingly simple as teaching a self-absorbed teenager that they are not the only people with problems can be a form of teen crisis intervention in and of itself.

“Lack of empathy has been cited as a possible factor in the development of antisocial behaviors, including bullying. An inability to recognize and care about the plight of the victim leaves the bullier unable to experience guilt and gives him little reason to change his behavior. By helping to develop empathy skills, we help kids become better human beings.”

Linda Carney at Suite 101 has a good post covering some of the way parents can coach their kids towards learning empathy. She buys additional school supplies to donate to her kids’ schools, allowing her two younger children to grasp that not everyone has what they have. Teenagers can get involved in their churches’ various outreach programs or join in with community efforts designed to help elderly folks with property upkeep. The point is for teens at risk to get out of their own skin and understand the plight of those who need help.

“Service projects give kids the chance to give back to others less fortunate. In addition to monetary and other donations, gifts of ones time and talent help kids feel competent and important in the world. These types of projects often also give kids the chance to work directly with the people they are helping, enabling kids to start to identify with them. This helps to further their empathy development.”

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Rivaling teen age drug abuse in it’s destructive impact on our nation’s teenagers is teen age alcohol abuse. It is a scourge that parent of troubled teenagers have to vigilant about at all times, but summer is when the dangers seem to multiply.

With more time on their hands, troubled teenagers are more likely to engage in drinking at the beach or pool side. There are always fatalities on our nations lakes and rivers from drunk teens careless use of jet skis and speed boats.

“According to SADD statistics, every 32 minutes of every day, a life is lost as a result of an impaired-driving crash.”

Before school let out for the summer, students from SADD demonstrated those statistic to their fellow teens in hopes of painting a graphic picture of how those statistic would decimate their class. Teen help is essential in the battle against teen drinking.

“This empowers kids to reach out to their own peers, and that has a powerful effect,” Petrone said. “They expect parents or leaders to say this, but they are not expecting it from a student — it’s all about empowering students.”
[…]
“It was a normal sunny Thursday morning for Meredith Fall, a junior at Juan Diego Catholic High School. But at 9:09 her day changed. From then on she was a “ghost” in the halls of the school.

Students at Juan Diego Catholic High School walk the halls dressed as ghosts during an activity to show that every 32 minutes a life is lost in an impaired-driving accident…”

White-faced and silent, no one spoke to Fall or more than a dozen other students who were plucked by the school’s Grim Reaper throughout the day to represent sobering fatality statistics linked to drunken driving”.

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Teen help that comes in the form of “Self-Esteem” programs has been subject to a great deal of criticism. The current pop psychology suggests that self-esteem can be bolstered by eliminating challenges that the teen might fail at, or by giving indiscriminate praise, no matter what the teen actually does.

Unfortunately, such programs render the teen incapable of meeting life’s demands, crippling his development and allowing for the type of immaturity that can easily lead to teen age drug abuse and other intrinsically selfish behavior.

Teens at risk are far better served by honesty. They so easily detect phoniness and grow to distrust adults, or even friends, who don’t care enough to say what is true or appear unable to recognize the truth.
Click the link below for the article the following synopsis comes from. There are simple and practical ways of helping a teen think well of themselves.

• Self-esteem is indeed important but the way to achieve is isn’t by blurring reality. _ has some very practical advice on how parents can work with their teens in developing authentic self-esteem.
• Provide Opportunities. Get kids involved in tasks that are slightly above their current level of functioning….
• Model Positive Thinking. Exhibiting a negative attitude can easily rub off on kids…
• Model Problem-Solving. Many kids are often uncomfortable when things don’t come easy because they don’t have the skills to manage roadblocks….
• Don’t Rescue. Avoid the urge to jump in at the first sign of frustration….
• Use Praise Properly. Don’t waste praise on simple or effortless tasks..
• Nice try. Despite our best attempts, we don’t succeed at everything….

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Teen help is a long time coming when it is in the hands of the bureaucrats.

“If drug dealers can organize kids to pick up and drop off drugs on their bikes, can bureaucrats not get their act together?”

Such is the frustrated remark of a Canadian columnist lamenting the lack of attention paid to where teenagers are to spend their time in the summer.

“There’s nowhere for these kids to go. Nobody wants them. They’ve been shooed out of the plazas, shooed from the street corners. People cross the street if they see two or three kids on a corner.

“They’re pariahs. We have a NIMBY (Not in my backyard) attitude towards our youth. They can’t even play basketball at midnight because no neighbourhood wants the noise of kids having a good time in the playground.”

The writer rightly points out that when our kids were young we filled their every waking moment with activities, from pre-school, to soccer, to dance class. Then right when they fall into the teens at risk category we give them very little and bemoan their inability to use their time well.

Why bother with it. Because of the little problem with teen age drug abuse which, unfortunately, can become the pastime of choice for a bored teen.

“I grew up in a tough area in Scarborough,” Hicks says, “and there were two choices — either smoke dope and break into houses or get out of here.

“My Dad registered me for every team going and I didn’t have time to do anything else but go to school, do my stuff and sleep. That’s where I learned about leadership. That made the difference for me.”

(Source)

What are your teens doing this summer?

When teen crisis intervention methods are based on the latest pop psychology as opposed to just plain common sense, disastrous results can occur. Such could be said for the pop wisdom that advocates protecting a teen’s so-called self-esteem at all costs. Susan Carney at Suite101 delineates the two opposing camps that have circled this issue and makes a clear case for plain common sense.

Common sense recognizes that self-esteem is the natural outgrowth of accomplishment. Of achieving a high mark. Of winning the race. Self-esteem is a natural process that is grounded in reality. Proponents of “feel good” self-esteem fail to realize that teens can detect empty praise as soon as it is given. Teen help that is premised on a fiction is, at best, counter-productive.

” Many self-esteem “programs” advocate encouraging kids to feel positive about themselves based on little more than the empty words. Platitudes such as “You’re special!” and “You’re great just as you are!” attempt to build up kid’s egos without the expectation of any self-improvement or growth. Without ties to any real accomplishment, the praise is hollow, and kids know it. Further damage is done when kids internalize that message to mean, “if they tell me I’m wonderful and I haven’t even done anything, maybe that means they don’t think I CAN do anything.” Or worse, “if I’m already great, why should I try something I might not be able to do and risk looking incompetent?” Far from inspiring capability, this line of thinking actually encourages helplessness.”

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Teen crisis intervention programs often emerge from communities that have suffered a tragic loss or have been threatened by irrational teen behavior. Such as a recent threat by two obviously troubled teens to kill their fellow students at Connetquot High School.

“The news of two teens suspected of plotting a “massive attack” at Connetquot High School, with the intention of killing scores of innocent students and teachers, is chilling.

Parents, students and school officials understandably want to know if and how such tragedies can be prevented. In this instance, officials say potential disaster was averted when a diary belonging to one of the teens was found. This was a stroke of luck. None of us, however, wants our future safety to depend upon such serendipity.”

But should future safety depend on a state sponsored psychological evaluation of your children? What Pandora’s box is opened by allowing the state to intrude so far into a family’s life that their conclusions might dictate your teen’s future? Does this really constitute teen help or a violation of privacy?

“Now a radical opportunity to identify and help at-risk youth is being introduced by the state Office of Mental Health. Working with a $33-million legislative allocation, the office is embracing a public health approach. Its goal is to provide a free voluntary psychological checkup for 400,000 children in the state, under a program called Child and Family Clinic-Plus. This program will begin to be implemented this fall by five nonprofit mental health clinics in Suffolk County and two in Nassau.

The parents of ninth, 10th and 11th graders in participating schools will decide if their children should take a standardized screening test. Those students whose scores on the test indicate that they may be at risk will be eligible for three free comprehensive assessments and nine free sessions of therapy at home.”

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It seems that in recent years Americans must often decide between safety and freedom. These suggested tests are voluntary now, but will their use lead the way to mandatory testing? Will parents have the right to refute the conclusions of such tests? These are some of the many issues that parents face.

Oppositional-defiant disorder defines itself by overtly aggressive, sometimes antagonistic, intentionally aggravating and or disruptive behaviors. Where ADHD presents with behavioral disturbances that tend to be inadvertent or related to attention and focus, ODD appears to be less innocuous, perhaps more “mean spirited.”

A blogger mentions a talk where it was proposed that the imagery regularly served up to our troubled teenagers via music videos may be adding to that vague hostility found in ODD behavior.

“This past weekend I was in DC presenting at a conference. One of the presenters on the agenda with me made a presentation on how music, in particular hip-hop music has turned into a means of teaching sociopath behaviors to young children and adolescents. It was an interesting premise. He based it on the stages of cognitive development as expounded by Piaget. In essence, he said since young children learn through images and music, it is not unlikely that the images seen on videos, associated with certain words and lyrics and music, can lead to mental disorders including but not limited to oppositional-defiant disorder.”

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When you consider the constant stream of vivid imagery - all orchestrated with compelling beats and laced with angry lyrics - that troubled teenagers are daily inundated with, there is little wonder that gangs thrive,teen age drug abuse escalates and angry teens abound. It is, after all, the prevalent mood and inflection of the culture that media directs at them. Teen help directed at offsetting this deluge of negativity is seriously needed. Who can sing a new song?

Teen help does not mean supervising your teenagers’ “kegger”. Teen help does not mean collecting all the car keys at your kid’s pool party and then going inside to settle in for a movie. What should be patently obvious is apparently a point of contention in the ongoing battle to prevent teens at risk from drinking.

Many parents feel that allowing their teens access to alcohol under controlled conditions will teach them responsibility. However, the prevalent word from the experts is that is just a comforting, but spurious notion.

“In many cases parents do this under the false assumption that they are protecting their kids. They make the assumption that they won’t drink elsewhere and that’s not true,” says Robert Lindsey, director of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.

In addition to drunken-driving accidents that too often end tragically, teen-drinking parties can spawn sexual assaults, stabbings, brawling and neighborhood vandalism. “We all know we’re fooling ourselves if we think underage drinking is fine,” says Stacy Saetta, a legal policy researcher at the Center for the Study of Law and Enforcement Policy in Felton, Calif. “Simply to say it’s a rite of passage isn’t good enough.” Even when parents think they are doing the right thing by gathering car keys of partiers, “kids still get away and still drive drunk,” she said. “These parties are very, very dangerous.”

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(via Save Our Youth)

Teen crisis intervention programs developed across the nation represent millions of dollars and man hours dedicated to diverting teens from the often fatal consequences of underage drinking. Parents who fail to see the immensity of the problem are failing their teenagers first and foremost.