Troubled Teens Resources

Allow me to bring to your attention a very candid,thorough account of one parents search for a teenage treatment program, boarding or military school.  As health professionals, they bring a different and valuable perspective to the process of evaluating various teen academies.
It’s a long piece that you can click over and read. We reproduce some key excerpts below:

“Parents of children and youth with severe emotional and behavioral problems soon discover that there are numerous roadblocks to seeking effective treatment. Most states have laws that restrict parents’ ability to deal effectively with their children’s serious behavior problems. Parents are legally and civilly responsible for the actions of their children, but they have very little legal authority to intervene in a serious way In most states, for example, parents can neither have their child drug tested nor receive the results of a drug test unless the child gives authorization. Additionally, in most states, parents must receive the child’s permission before placing him or her in a treatment facility. Parents can go through complex and lengthy legal proceedings to have their children hospitalized, but emergencies usually demand immediate action. Add to this the difficulties with managed care, where treatment often benefits the bottom line rather than the patient, and you have a very difficult situation.”

[..]

“Once we made the decision to place Jamie in a residential facility, we began an intensive and systematic search to identify the facility that would best meet his needs. We researched residential programs whose orientations ranged from medical to wilderness survival. We wanted specific information about their educational and treatment programs, average length of stay, and — most important — outcomes experienced by people who had completed their programs.

The information we received was at best confusing and very general. Very few facilities had any real information concerning their program’s effectiveness. Many institutions indicated that their programs were highly effective, and we were provided with testimonial evidence, but when we pressed for specific numbers, we discovered that virtually none of the institutions had any data on program effectiveness or outcomes of the youth they had graduated.

Equally disturbing were the answers we received when we asked how youth progressed through the treatment programs. In most cases, the answers suggested that there was little if any organized system of program advancement. There were some programs that had well-thought-out plans that were specifically linked to improvements in the youth’s behavior, but these were few and far between. What was abundant across institutions was the barrage of mail, videos, advertisements, phone calls, and promotional offers that we received.”
from Difficult Decisions: Lessons Learned From One Family’s Story of Residential Placement/William H Evans

The authors also produce a questionnaire - Questions to Ask When Considering Residential Placement - that will help a parent structure their own search for a troubled teen boarding school.

“Unfortunately, many adults do not really believe that young people possess the quality of “greatness,” which is perhaps not surprising since youth seldom are provided with opportunities to display their true human potentials. Positive Peer Culture is concerned with setting expectations high enough to challenge the young person to do all he is capable of doing. To expect less is to deprive him of the opportunity of feeling as positively about himself as possible.”

As a parent of a struggling teen you will have already accumulated a great deal of information on a variety of boarding schools, boot camps, and wilderness schools. Much as a student decides on academic curriculum, a parent will be seeking a boarding school for their teenager that incorporates curriculum and programs that will supply their teenager with simple, viable tools with which to modify their behavior and tools with which to successfully navigate through the traumas and pain that life inevitably brings.

The teenager often has no ability to recognize their “own greatness“. Indeed, quite the opposite occurs within a unhappy teenager’s mind; self-loathing,doubt, and shame will blind a young person from recognizing the wealth of strength and talent that they have yet to tap into.

It is very hard to destroy what you value and once a teen is able to experientially comprehend the value and gifts that they possess, their instinct will be to nurture and protect who they are, not self-destruct. To successfully walk in the power of one’s own strength, to supply the wind for one’s own sails, is headier than any narcotic available. Ask any teen who has successfully embraced their recovery programs and shed their addictions. The radiance of renewal and recovery is unmistakable.

” Positive Peer Culture makes no pretense of turning over all decision making to the students. Adults never abdicate their authority or responsibility. Instead Positive Peer Culture is so designed that adults are in control without controlling. A flight instructor does not give full control to the student pilot but is always available to take charge if hazards are encountered while the student learns to fly. So in Positive Peer Culture, adults assign responsibility to youth and then teach them to follow through on that responsibility.

The notion of heavy demands on students is not altogether fashionable, and traditional mental health concepts have sometimes been interpreted to say that setting high expectations actually is harmful for young people; hence, those with problems sometimes have not been sufficiently challenged to use the strength they possess. These ideas were criticized by Victor Frankl.

“If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load that is laid upon it for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So if the therapists wish to foster the patients’ mental health they should not be afraid to increase that load through a reorientation towards the meaning of one’s life.’”
(Source)

Any boarding school or youth camp a parent chooses will need to incorporate programs and disciplines compatible with the teenager who is in criss. Positive Peer Culture presents another school of thought that parents will want to investigate when deciding which boarding school will prove the best fit for their teenager.