Troubled Teens Resources

The typical teen of today is being bombarded from every direction.  They are under pressure to perform academically, to complete responsibilities at home, to compete athletically, and the list goes on.  It is not a widely known fact that the teen of today is more up to date on current events than generations past.  Today’s teen is aware of global problems and conflicts, the economic devastation, and the political separation that our county is currently working through.  When you add the typical teen issues to the increased information that today’s teen is receiving it is no wonder today’s teen finally reaches a boiling point.   

The teen implosion can manifest itself in many ways.  Some teens will become withdrawn and possibly work themselves into a full blown depression.  Some teens will begin to look for ways to relieve some of the pressure they are experiencing through drug abuse.  Very few will seek out a parent for help and advice.  The most frequent form of help sought by a teen comes in the way of advice from their peers.  If a teen asks a friend that is abusing drugs for advice the advice they give will obviously be to try some drugs.  The teen may begin to experiment in sexual activities.  The best advice and help is obviously the teen’s parents but if the parent does not have a close relationship with their teen they will never come to them with their problems.  It is important that a parent is vigilante to their teens changes in attitudes and moods. 

Even a good teen left unassisted will begin the downward spiral until they earn the label of troubled teen.  The troubled teen may not have a Mohawk or any visible signs of rebellion.  It is usually not until the troubled teen has hit rock bottom and is basically crying out for attention that they will begin to display extreme hair and clothing styles.   One warning signal for parents for a child that is moving in a negative direction is their choice of friends.  If you observe that your teen is hanging with kids with radical hair styles or clothing choices, it is usually only a matter of time until your child begins to dress and act like the peers he is “hanging out” with.  It is naïve to think that a teen is associating with a group of troubled teens and not engaging in the same activities the negative peers are engaging in.

“Once they get in this system, it’s a meat grinder,” said W. Michael Coulson, one of about 25 court-appointed attorneys in the juvenile courts. “For the most part, they’re on a rocket sled headed for TDCJ, unless something really big steps in the way.”

The gentleman above is speaking of the fate of troubled teens who have committed adult crimes in Texas, but the same holds true for any juvenile whose crimes merit the possibility of being charged as an adult. As courts around the country struggle with the increasing number of violent youth offenders, some districts have begun executing harsher sentences, trying more juveniles as adults.

“Texas permits courts to certify juveniles as young as 15 to be tried as adults for murder and other violent crimes.

For the past decade, Harris County has prosecuted more juveniles as adults than Bexar, Dallas, Tarrant and Travis counties combined.

In 1996, Harris County certified 170 juveniles amid a public crackdown on violent youth crime. That number steadily dropped to roughly 55 a year between 2003 and 2005.”

(source)

It makes one appreciate the necessity of early teen crisis intervention when perhaps brat camp programs or some type of training might have made the difference between continuing to break the law or choosing another path. Recently a 16 year old was sentenced to 25 years for aggravated robbery. Is that too severe?

Where do you put such teens if the juvenile system can’t rehabilitate them? It is a debate we will be seeing more and more of as court systems across the country struggle with the most effective methods of saving a teen’s life while keeping the public safe.

While Americans struggle with the notion of charging violent troubled teens as adults, New Zealand is considering lowering the juvenile prosecutorial age to 12 due to youth crime so pervasive that some say ignoring it “could blight the future for generations to come.”

“NZ First MP Ron Mark has what he believes is one significant answer - a bill before a parliamentary select committee that would lower the age of prosecution from 14 to 12 and introduce tougher penalties for young, serious criminals.”

I hope they establish some teen boot camps and schools for troubled teens also. From these statistics, it appears as if they need them.

“In New Zealand 14 to 16-year-olds commit about 45,500 crimes each year, with children too young to be prosecuted involved in more than 8500 in one year.

Justice Ministry statistics show police picked up 700 children under 10 and 7900 children 10 to 13 last year for crimes including violence, drugs and burglary.

All too often police are powerless to intervene.

They say there is little they can do in cases like a 10-year-old who attacked classmates with a piece of timber, two 12-year-olds with 33 burglary charges, and a 13-year-old who attacked police with a baseball bat.
[…]
Under 14 they can only be prosecuted for murder or manslaughter.

After that, when police can deal with them, they are already career crooks.

One Lower Hutt 13-year-old in social welfare care for sexual offences abused two-year-olds four more times while in care, with police unable to act.”

(source)

Parents in the midst of coping with troubled teens need support, pure and simple. What do you do with your teen who is struggling to beat drugs, or the teen who keeps running away? Should you start looking into schools for troubled teens? Is there anyone you can talk to who has sent their son or daughter to a brat camp?

Well, yes there is. In fact, like all things on earth, the internet can be used for good or ill. On the plus side is the easy and instantaneous contact you can find with folks who are struggling with the same issues. Be it health problems, money problems, or problems with teens, there is usually thousands of people talking about the same problems in a forum or chat room somewhere on the net.

“…here I am, thrilled that there are dozens of online sites for parents of adolescents and teens. On my favorite sites I’ve asked other moms dozens of questions about the roller coaster ride of hormones, the survival techniques for homework blues, and the “is this normal” questions that come up all the time.

Soon I imagine myself once again awake in the middle of the night, worried about my son who is out past his curfew and isn’t answering his cell phone. Who am I going to call at that hour? Why, I’ll go online to Parents & Company or theantidrug.com or Teendriving.com and find some other moms in some other states also up at 1 a.m. worrying over their kids. And I bet we’d all rather be worried about a diaper rash, don’t you think?”
(source)

Schools for troubled teens provide time and tools for healing. If teenagers are also being treated for addiction, they also learn a great deal about it’s nature, what triggers it, what in their own make-up causes them to be susceptible and what measures can a recovering teen take to fend against all the temptations to use once they return home.

Parents should become just as knowledgeable about addiction as their troubled teens. It is very important for parents to be aware of what may cause the addict to misstep, and what they can do to make the home environment supportive of their teen’s recovery.

The following is a quick excerpt on an article that suggests ways to break the cycle of addiction, follow the link for more.

• “Addicts that are predominantly excitement seekers should concentrate on being content with the “ordinary” and developing an appetite for satisfaction rather than stimulation. Thrill-seeking addicts need to learn how to be content with ordinary activities and increase their appreciation for the “little” joys of life. Over stimulation creates satiation. Therefore, overcoming an excitement-seeking addiction involves learning how to live with less arousal and allowing your body and mind to become accustomed to lowered arousal.”
• “Addicts need to find alternative ways of responding to their trigger mechanisms. This means learning to deal with need in a more wholesome way. For instance, if boredom is a trigger, the addict needs to learn some way of handling boredom without resorting to the addictive behavior. If the trigger is depression, the addict must seek help in discovering the underlying cause of the depression and overcoming it. Suppressing depression is never a cure — it only prolongs the depression.”

(source)

The more you read about troubled teens and the tumultuous world that they live in, the more you realize how critical their early years are. It seems that if you don’t start growing a teen right from the very start, the deep relationship and the mutual respect that parents and teens need to weather adolescence never is established.

A teen can, for all the world, seem stable and yet, make a misstep that plummets them down a disastrous path. Some parents spend their entire savings trying to get that teen back. Expensive rehabs, schools for troubled teens, psychotherapy and medication. And sometimes, no matter what the parents have done, the teen is lost.The ultimate fate of a teenager lies in their own hands, as much as parents would like to believe otherwise.

“When Cook learned that her teen daughter, Kayla, was abusing drugs, she went into overdrive. She and Kayla’s father shelled out $33,000 for nine months in a drug treatment program in Hamilton County. After that, Kayla stayed clean for a couple of months late last year. But the allure of drugs was too strong.

On the night of May 13, Kayla went to hang out with friends, and ended up with multiple drugs coursing through her veins. The 18-year-old girl lapsed into a coma. Three days later, she died…

Later that month, her classmates at Lebanon High School graduated without her.

Teen drug abuse deaths are rarely publicized, Cook said. “The parents and families are embarrassed. They don’t want anyone to know their kid died from a drug overdose. I’m embarrassed that mine did.”

(source)

At least when troubled teens find that their poor behavior has landed them in schools for troubled teens, they are still in a position to graduate. Professional and accredited schools for troubled teens also include academics so that the teen does not fall too far behind.

However some teens education is interrupted by their misbehavior or, given current zero tolerance policies, through no real fault of their own.

“He related a story about a student enrolled at the Harrisburg LAB site who worked over his lunch hours and his duties involved opening boxes and stocking shelves at a local retailer. He inadvertently carried the box cutter knife he used at work back to school with him, another student saw it and reported him and he ended up being expelled under the school’s zero tolerance policy.

“A lot of these kids aren’t bad kids,” he emphasized. “They just made bad decisions.”

“These kids” are those who, for one reason or another, have put their education in jeopardy. They are however not going to fall through the cracks in one Illinois school district where “learning alternative branch” (LAB) schools can keep troubled teens on track to graduate.

“Nine out of 10 of these students have a lot on their plate, and we try to help lighten that load,” Norris said, whether it be discipline problems at home or other problems, such as homelessness. He related cases where the staff worked to find clothing or other needs, like school supplies. “We had one student who had lived in a car for three years. Oftentimes, no one has shown them how to be successful. What we find is they want to have the same opportunities as all other students.”
(source)

When teen help has as it’s source other teenagers, it is often more effective than help rendered to teens by adults. After all, for troubled teens, adults are the enemies who block all of their efforts to live their own lives. Adults are accused of using scare tactics and bogus information in their fight against teen age drug abuse.

Somehow, the same messages when delivered by a fellow teen has more validity. The teens who serve as positive peer role models never get as much attention as their delinquent counterparts, but they undertake a valuable service in their work with their fellow students.

“Roper is a member of the Hamilton County Teen Drug Advisory Board and is one of 27 students throughout the state named to the Indiana Point of Youth program, part of the Indiana Criminal Justice’s Substance Abuse Services division.

The program is a teen-led advisory group that has the ear of the governor, Indiana General Assembly and other policy-makers who seek solutions to youth substance use from a peer perspective.

“We set up the different goals that SADD chapters will have across the state,” Roper explained. “This year we’re focusing mainly on alcohol abuse, over-the-counter drugs and meth abuse.”

Roper relishes the opportunity to make a statewide impact on youth drug and alcohol abuse, helping her peers understand there’s more to life than getting drunk or stoned.”

(source)

Do you feel blindsided? You just went through your son’s bedroom, you were only picking up laundry, and there it was. What is it, a stash, is that what they call it? You don’t know the lingo of teen age drug abuse yet but you do know your pain pills when you see them. And you know damn well that’s pot.

You look around the room at the trophies, the photos of him on the swim team, his awards. You just had a great golf outing with him. What in blue blazes is going on?

Some parents are just plain irresponsible. They don’t see casual drug use as any more than a rite of passage. But then there are those conscientious and dedicated parents who did it right, they feel that they have a good relationship with their kids. The possibility of their teen using drugs just didn’t ever seem possible.

“By all accounts, Jimmie Moyer was a typical American kid. He played sports, his family took vacations together, there was nothing – nothing at least immediately visible – to suggest that he was at risk for drug addiction.

But around the time he was 12 years old, Owens said, Jimmie began to smoke pot. Over an extended period of time, his drug of choice changed to methamphetamine and his usage soared, to the point where he was using significant amounts per day.”
[…]
After a long battle with methamphetamine addiction, he came to his family asking for help in his own personal war against the drug. His family sent him to a recovery facility out-of-state to separate him for the drug dealers and users that he knew.

Six days into that recovery program, he took his life.”

(source)

Parents who bite the bullet and take the necessary steps to stop their troubled teens plunge into drugs are to be commended. It is a hard road to begin walking down, but the ultimate consequences of denial are far more painful.

The downward spiral for the drug addicted teen is rapid. One day your teen is the same old great kid and the next day a sullen and disrespectful teen replaces him. Or so it seems. But drug use escalates other dangerous behavior. Promiscuous and careless sex that can result in disease or pregnancy. Failed grades or expulsion from school will leave a teen without a secure path to the future. Drug deals gone bad can result in a teen being busted or worse, dead.

So when parents finally heed all the warning signs, they are ready to start researching some long term solutions for their teen. But where do you begin when tracking down schools for troubled teens?

Teen Options offers a very helpful podcast that gives parents a good overview at what to look for in schools and programs and how to narrow your choices down to those institutions that will meet your teen’s needs.

Here are a few suggested questions to ask prospective schools with the complete list to be found at the link below.

• Can you take a teen if they don’t want to stay?
• Can the teen get kicked out?
• What must they do to get kicked out?
• Do you take aggressive teens?
• What are the program age ranges?
• Are boys and girls kept separate? How?
• What types of financing do you have?
• What contact do parents have with teen?

(Teen Options)