Troubled Teens Resources

You would think that a student who reported sexual abuse by a teacher would not be the recipient of her peers’ and teachers’ contempt and disdain. You would expect that the school would fire said teacher and make amends to her family. But apparently some teachers protect their own. That is what one family discovered after reporting a music teacher’s sexual advances.

“It’s a silent epidemic is what it is,” the girl’s father says. “People are protecting people who aren’t worth protecting. I hope our daughters will have that instilled in them, too — that you report what you know.”

Their daughter finished her education in private boarding schools, unable to endure the backlash her report unleashed.

“Immediately after news of Sperlik’s arrest hit in January 2005, people began questioning the girls’ motives: Why didn’t they come forward sooner? Were they really telling the truth?

Some think their parents simply want money from a lawsuit.
[…]
It was almost too much for the girl, who never anticipated such harsh public scrutiny.”

The troubled teenager dyed her hair black and began a ritual often associated with sexual abuse - cutting. Finally, an attempted suicide landed her in a psychiatric hospital.

“I just can’t take it anymore,” she wrote in a note to her parents.

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And neither should parents. Read the article in full and understand that it must be parents who protect their teens’ best interest. Recent reports on sexual abuse perpetrated by teachers, like the one quoted, suggest that all to often, some in the teaching profession are far more interested in protecting their own.

Teen crisis intervention may amount to doing nothing at all. As we have all seen, a teenager hell bent on destroying their life does not take kindly to criticism or advice. Be it a teenager or an adult, an addict who hasn’t hit bottom yet is likely to keep on using until they do.

The troubled teenager who wrote the following seems to recognize the importance of consequences, even though he has yet to
hit bottom, he seems to understand that will be the only lesson he’ll understand.

“Don’t let your love and anxiety for me lead you into doing what I ought to do for myself….

Don’t accept my promises, I’ll promise anything to get off the hook. But the nature of my illness prevents me from keeping promises, even though I mean them at the time.

Don’t make empty threats. Once you have made a decision, stick to it.

Don’t believe everything I tell you, it may be a lie. Denial of reality is a symptom of my illness. Moreover, I’m likely to lose respect for those I can fool too easily.

Don’t let me take advantage of you or exploit you in any way. Love cannot exist for long without the dimension of justice.

Don’t cover up for me or try in any way to spare me the consequences of my drinking and using. Don’t lie for me, pay my bills, or meet my obligations. It may avert or reduce the very crisis that would prompt me to seek help. I can continue to deny that I have a drinking and using problem as long as you provide an automatic escape from the consequences of my drinking/using.”

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Guess I’m stuck on the meth meme today. There certainly are some compelling stories of how absolutely corrosive and vile this addiction is. One young man, when describing the destruction meth wrought in his life, said something that caught my attention.

“The meth gets you thinking three things. You have a fear of life, fear of success, and fear of self. When this happened I seemed to not have the will to go or ask for help. ”

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Just as that is the exact formula for a life of failure, it’s opposite is a good description of how schools for troubled teens and military boarding schools turn the addict around.

A good teen boarding school will have teachers and programs that teach teens to embrace life, not fear it. A good teen program will teach a troubled teenager the incremental steps of achieving success - the discipline, the perseverance - all of those little mental muscles that a recovering teen has to ‘work out’ until they are fit and toned.

Fear of self is also part and parcel of addiction. When your life is collapsed around you, friends gone, money depleted, health deteriorating, an addict grows to have a deep distrust of themselves. Unworthiness shrouds the self-image in a veil of self-recrimination and hate.

Fear of self can, however, be transformed into confidence in self. The troubled teen school dedicates much of their curriculum to helping a teen gain mastery over their talents, teaching them skills that the teen can leverage to pursue any goal that they finally decide on.

Do you ever want to shout “Amen!” after reading an article that “nails” an issue perfectly? Well, at least according to your view on the topic. Yet I think few parents of teenagers would disagree that the constant hue and cry for teen crisis intervention is just not quite right. The Boomer generation especially has an understanding that teen age life is not supposed to be this never ending series of drama and angst.

Granted, crime is worse, threats are everywhere and the relative innocence of the last century has shuffled off the stage. But why? Why have we come to need a designation such as “predatory teen”? How did the “troubled teenager” come to be accepted as a norm?

The only predators that generations past had to deal with walked on four legs, excepting the occasional bi-ped miscreant whom society punished immediately, and, I might add, without anguishing if a childhood trauma “made him do it”.

Schools for troubled teens? Teens “back then” didn’t have the luxury of being troubled and the occasional teen who turned to the dark side saw the inside of a “reform school” the likes of which would curl you hair. The ACLU would be apoplectic.

What in the world happened? The following author, excerpted below, nails it, and to him one could say a hearty, amen!.

“…the crucial difference between teens then and now, here and there, is not physiology, but parents who give a lot and expect relatively little, a media that encourages the young to view life as a never-ending soap opera, and a pop culture that enables teen irresponsibility. In the latter are included “experts” who tell us that we really have no right to expect mature behavior from teenagers.

Our children deserve more than this. Don’t they?”

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Teen crisis intervention that is designed to dislodge your teenager from his video games may seem overly dramatic. However, if your teen is obsessed to the point of dropping out of all other activities, is reluctant to join in family activities (hopefully there are some), and has few friends - and those friends are also game obsessed, than you have a type of addiction, or at least an obsession, that has to be dealt with.

“Mardi Allen, psychologist with the state Department of Mental Health, said the issue is about engaging in anything to extremes. Allen has not seen patients with a specific gaming problem in private practice. But it is a part of a problem package patients describe.

“The appeal is there. They get an emotional high, … a sense of pride, an accomplishment,” Allen said. Her concerns are the underlying problems. What else is happening with the child?”

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Perhaps the key is just that - a sense of accomplishment.Couldn’t that sense of accomplishment be derived from activities that have real value? In a world where acclaim is given to celebrities who clearly have not earned it and a public school system increasingly bent on discouraging teens from developing a healthy sense of competition - maybe the only “playing field” that has a challenge for teens is the virtual one. And that speaks more to the dereliction of duty by parents and schools than it does about the troubled teenager.

Military boarding schools or other private boarding schools are often the only opportunity that a troubled teenager has to find and focus on a positive role model.

A program aimed at teen crisis intervention in LA has been supplying role models for their delinquent teens for over 19 years. One statement by a volunteer mentor/cop is striking.

“Police sergeant Thurman MacNeal is one of 3,000 men who have trained as Role Models. As a black cop whose interactions with black boys too often involve handcuffs, he says, it can be ”discouraging because so many of these young men have so much talent it’s amazing. But because of other things that are going on with them and because those talents are not being developed . . .” The thought trails away.”

No matter it be via troubled teen boarding school or mentoring program or a small community effort, the biggest gift you can give a troubled teenager is the gift of himself. In order to do so the teen needs an environment and role models that can help them learn what their gifts, skills or interests are and then be given the programs that will help them develop those talents.

“I believe children who have a vision of themselves in the future have hope. And without a vision of yourself in the future, you don’t value your life and consequently, you don’t value the lives of others.”

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Girls boarding schools seemed, at first, an unlikely solution to Sarah’s problems. Could any kind of private boarding school help Sarah deal with her sexual acting out? Would separating her from friends and the opposite sex further alienate her?

Sarah’s mother struggled with these questions when trying to determine the best course of action for her daughter’s future. Abused by her step-father, now in jail, Sarah could not seem to stop presenting herself as a little Lolita online, as if hungering for the only “affection” she could understand. Sarah’s mother feared for the day when her daughter would actually meet some of the men that she now teased by posting provocative pictures.

After discovering her daughter’s MySpace page, Sarah’s mother immediately sought out professional counseling. It led her to choose a specialty school for troubled teens based on her belief that her daughter needed to address her emotional and sexual problems on a neutral playing ground, away from the influence of all the highly sexualized pop culture that teens are inundated with.

“I want Sarah to have the time and space to discover that her worth goes far beyond her physical attractiveness. She is brilliant in math, so I chose a school with an emphasis on preparing young girls for a career in science. They combine their academics with regular therapy and behavioral programs. I’m convinced that once her self-esteem is derived from her achievements and her role models are based on accomplished women in science and business, she’ll come to realize that she need not cheapen herself in order to earn love and affection.”

Do your homework. There are thousands of programs and schools, many with financial aid. You are bound to find a school that will be the best fit for your troubled teenager.

Teen crisis intervention that spares a troubled teenager a juvenile record is to be encouraged. Though offenses during youth are not to be used against the adult teen, the record will remain and can impinge on school or career choices in the future.

As usual, the program developed in one small town is home grown. Devised by the community in response to growing juvenile crime - crime which inevitably leads to more severe offenses if not nipped in the bud. It is an example of what pro-active parents can initiate with the co-operation from their local churches, community groups and city officials.

“Teens in Durham are being offered a second chance — a chance that not only keeps them out of the courts but gives them an opportunity to give back to the community.

It’s all thanks to a new policing program designed to get to the root cause of youth crime and get kids the help they need before it’s too late.

“Basically, if we catch say a 15-year-old who has broken a window at a church, we look at it and decide whether it would be better to try some alternative justice rather than pursue criminal charges,” Durham Regional Police spokesman Dave Selby explained.

“In such a case, we might instead sit the kid down with his or her parents, the minister of the church, and, with the help of a professional facilitator, discuss in a calm, rational environment how the youth’s actions affected everybody involved,” Selby said.

It’s being tried by other police services across the country and Durham cops began to “really pushing it hard” in January.”

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Schools for troubled teens are a tremendous boon and have been a strong factor in the recovery of drug addicted teens and teens with behavioral problems. However, they are often unfairly portrayed by the media as if they were prison camps. When parents are considering enrolling their teen in a troubled teen boarding school or a summer brat camp, it is advisable not to depict the school as punishment, but as a means of ultimately helping the troubled teenagers reach their dreams.

“I know that is why Brooke ran away, sobbed her best friend Diane, ” and if she ever finds out that I told you where she was thinking of going,well, she won’t ever forgive me”

What Brooke doesn’t realize is that she probably saved her friend’s life. What ever reason a troubled teenager may have for running away, they often put their “best friends ” in a terrible position when confiding in them. Brooke finally went to Dianne’s mother who described the school Dianne was to attend, convincing Brooke that punishment was not the goal, but that attending would help Dianne who had been depressed and suicidal. Convinced, Brooke told them where Dianne went.

“Talk with your friend about what’s bothering him or her and put your heads together to find better — and more constructive — solutions. At the same time, speak with an adult you trust as soon as possible, and tell him or her that your friend is talking seriously about running away. If you don’t feel comfortable telling your parents, there are other adults in your life who may be able to help out: another relative, a teacher, a coach, a school counselor, your family doctor, or a religious leader, for example.

A trusted adult may be able to help your friend understand that there are better alternatives to running away.”

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Teen help for anorexia usually includes treatment for yet another disorder that afflicts a number of troubled teenagers. Body Dysmorphic Disorder.(BDD) You’ll know it when you see it, however, you may not recognize the potential psychological problems that can accompany it.

A family member became alarmed last year when her daughter, Erin, took no interest in buying a summer wardrobe. As a child, Erin lived to swim at the club pool. Now she spent all her time inside the gym, in sweats, mercilessly pummeling a boxing bag or lifting weights.

Erin loathes her body. She spent an inordinate amount of time pre-occupied with studying her musculature in the mirror, looking for the first signs that her relentless weight lifting had begun to sculpt the dream body she desperately wanted to appear.

Erin was suffering from BDD. Left unattended, obsessions with physical appearance can precipitate teen age drug abuse via amphetamines - and more often in teen boys - steroids. Depression, self-harm and anger all can circle viciously around the troubled teenager unable to accept their appearance. What can parents do to help?

“There are several things parents can do to alleviate their child’s suffering. First, take the disorder seriously. Second, avoid reassuring your child that they look okay but instead encourage them to talk openly about their concerns. Third, encourage and support psychiatric treatment and discourage surgical treatment.”

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