Troubled Teens Resources

Parents are warned that the initial period of time after a young man or woman returns home from a troubled teen boarding school is a critical part of their continued recovery. Relapse is a realistic concern and the parent or care giver of a troubled teen has to be cognizant of the factors that will tempt the teen to return to drug use.

For anyone who has ever quit smoking cigarettes, they find that they also cut down considerably on coffee or beer. Why? Because the act of drinking the cup of coffee or can of beer is associated with smoking the cigarette that used to accompany it, triggering a craving for nicotine.

For the recovering teen addict, triggers are those places and people that the teen went to and associated with while using drugs. Music can also serve as a powerful trigger, diverting the teen’s attention back to the evocative stimuli that formed a soundtrack to their time as a user.

An effective teen boarding school or brat camp will have equipped the teen to deal with these expected challenges. Learning methods of defeating temptation is simply a necessity in life and it is a coping skill that an effective teen treatment program will impart.

“Among other things, addicted people must learn how to avoid contact with the triggers that may set in motion their brain’s demanding cry for drugs or alcohol. And when those triggers are unavoidable, people must develop the skills that will prevent the craving from taking over. Learning these skills must be a core element of any treatment program; maintaining them should be part of an after care program or long-term recovery plan.”
(source)

Tear down. Build up. Wax on. Wax off. Process. Because healing is a process it can’t be rushed. There are no effective ‘quick fix’ teenage treatment programs. Your drug abusing teen is broken inside. Re-building them inside, empowering your teenager with the use of their own skills and talents, teaching them the value of their life and the values of the lives of those around them takes time.

Choosing a boarding school that fails to offer programs designed to walk your teenager through all the necessary stages of recovery is the same as building on a faulty foundation. Not only do you want to create a stable foundation but the teenager needs also to be equipped with tools to maintain his new purchase on life. That is the why selecting a boarding school that implements a comprehensive treatment program is critical for your teenagers recovery.

Programs of that caliber can be found at Tipton’s Academy for Boys. One component of Tipton’s multi-pronged approach is the use of Positive Peer Culture

“The Positive Peer Culture discipline has a long and successful history. The Tipton Academy incorporates some of the basic components from this discipline. PPC is neither a loosely organized program nor one that is totally run by the adolescents. There is a keen understanding of the need to have adults oversee the process without derailing it by taking over. When a youth arrives at the Tipton Academy, he will be assigned to a group and its staff mentor. He will remain in this group throughout his stay. Each group will have responsibilities associated with it. Groups will be assigned varying details, community service projects, group aspects of the animal assistance program, sports/academic etc. teams, and group PPC sessions. In the group he will learn teamwork, sound decision making in the absence of specific guidelines, and how, through cooperation, significant accomplishments can be made. Staff are taught to understand the need for youth to learn how to work through their issues to help them prepare for similar situations they will have when returning to their families.”

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)

Putting the Pieces Together:Toward a Motivational Understanding of Change
• Miller and Rollnick suggest that one way to put together
this puzzle is to “think of motivation as fundamental to
change.”
• There is reason to believe this, since clients’ motivation
to change is often a good predictor of outcome.
• Motivation can be influenced by many naturally
occurring interpersonal and intrapersonal factors, and
by specific interventions.
• It seems particularly sensitive to interpersonal
communication styles.
• Effective brief interventions appear too short to teach
new skills or alter personality, but that they can change
motivation. (pg 2)(PDF)

The above is from a PDF found on WIRED, an excellent site that “… developed as a way of empowering people to tackle problems caused by substance use.” It is based out of the UK, very well organized, offering a bit of a different perspective on varying methods of working with the teen in crisis, and replete with small vignettes featuring both parents and teens alike finding their way through the mine fields of substance abuse, intervention and treatment. Reading these, embattled teenagers stand a chance of catching a glimpse of themselves in the words of their peers.

This statement is particularly interesting :

“ Effective brief interventions appear too short to teach
new skills or alter personality, but that they can change
motivation“

‘Brief interventions’ may seem futile when dealing with an addicted or abusing teen, but cumulatively, they rip a hole in the fabric of denial that blinds a teen to their own downward spiral. They can pierce the hardness of heart, if only briefly, that typifies an addict’s self defense. They can be very simple things, an introduction of new paradigms, comparable to planting seeds, that will bear harvest later as the teen heals.

“...they can change the motivation.” A small intervention may be something as simple as allowing your struggling teen to see and hear himself in the stories of other teenagers. There are some brutally honest stories and confession of use and abuse on the Moments of Truth Board on the Check Yourself site.

And here is another seed to plant. A quiz your teenager can take to assess the extent of his pot problem. Perhaps a series of “small interventions” will hold the worst wolves at bay until the addicted teen finds his way back home.

1. Has smoking pot stopped being fun?

2. Do you ever get high alone?

3. Is it hard for you to imagine a life without marijuana?

4. Do you find that your friends are determined by your marijuana use?

5. Do you smoke marijuana to avoid dealing with your problems?

6. Do you smoke pot to cope with your feelings?

7. Does your marijuana use let you live in a privately defined world?

8. Have you ever failed to keep promises you made about cutting down or controlling your dope smoking?

9. Has your use of marijuana caused problems with memory, concentration, motivation?

10. When your stash is nearly empty, do you feel anxious or worried about how to get more?

11. Do you plan your life around your marijuana use?

12. Have friends or relatives ever complained that your pot smoking is damaging your relationship with them?