How To Find Boarding Schools For Troubled Teens
If you’re looking into boarding schools for troubled teens, you know you have a problem. Your teenager has a problem with anger and defiant behavior, but you and your family have a problem, too, because like it or not, you’re right in the middle of it, and you have no choice but to deal with it.
There are two major schools of thought as to the cause of this negative behavior pattern that has developed—this pervasive anger, rule-breaking, disrespectfulness, and even defiance. One school holds that the teen is reacting to “negative interactions”, primarily with parents, but possibly also with other authority figures. The other school of thought is that somehow the child never made it out the other side of the negativity of the “terrible twos”, and that he’s stuck in that oppositional mode.
Whichever is correct, you now have an adolescent, or pre-adolescent who is too big to spank, too young to send out on his own. You’re responsible for his actions, but he’s out of control, and won’t follow your rules. He’s sarcastic, or withdrawn, or sullen, or uncooperative, or all of the above.
What are you going to do to help him, and to survive, and to help the family as a whole?
If you haven’t already had an evaluation done by an expert in child behavior, this would be wise. You need to know, if you don’t already, if there is something else going on. Very often, depression or ADHD, or problems at school, or problems with peers underlie the defiant behavior. The proper help and treatment for the defiant teen with ADHD will be different than for one suffering from serious depression, or the one with no obvious underlying cause.
If you’re considering boarding schools for troubled teens, you’ve probably done all that. You may well have tried medication if indicated, and Parent Management Training, and perhaps “Tough Love”, or any of a number of other programs. Nothing you’ve tried has worked, you’re dealing with a situation that is more extreme than most, and one of the several kinds of boarding schools seems like it might be the only solution.
It’s a difficult decision. These programs are expensive, and you also don’t want to feel like, or be seen by your child, as abandoning him when he needs you most.
They go by several different names. There are “Residential Boarding Schools, “, “Residential Treatment Centers”, “Therapeutic Boarding Schools”, “Schools for Troubled Youths”, etc.
The common denominator is that they get the troubled child out of the current environment. They provide structure and discipline, and sometimes fairly hard physical labor. They usually provide a substantial amount of individual and group therapy. They gradually teach the child to stop blaming others for everything, and to take responsibility for his decisions. They look beneath the surface to try to discover what’s behind the anger, recognizing that simply insisting on behavioral change, without addressing, and providing emotional support for the underlying issues doesn’t work. Of course, because the school isn’t emotionally involved in the way a parent is, they can usually do this much more effectively than the parent can.
The better schools involve the family– in fact they insist on family involvement.
Of course, you need to check out the potential facilities. The National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs (natsap.org) has a list of questions you should ask, dealing with accreditation and licensing, credentials of staff, clinical oversight, academic programs, risk management, outcomes and results, and so forth. Having this list at hand would be helpful as you start investigating potential schools, regardless of the type.
If you’re not sure it’s time for boarding school, you can learn a lot more about dealing with an angry teen at No Nonsense Parenting You’ll learn how to discipline without guilt, how to handle disrespect without yelling, how to stay sane, and how to bring peace back to your home.
Turning your child over to a boarding school is a momentous and difficult decision. Take heart in the fact that if you do decide to do it, the change of scenery and reduction of tension, along with the interventions done by those skilled in doing them, often result in extremely positive outcomes.
