Is residential treatment the right choice for my troubled teenager?
Parents of teenagers who act out, will always in the first instance try and cure this behavior themselves. They may consult the school counselor or send their child for psychological evaluation and therapy. As each successive approach fails to turn heir defiant teenager around, the parents search for more solutions and help. It may be that a teens' behavior is tolerated because the parent feels some guilt, such as those who are going through a divorce or a remarriage.
The defiant behavior that is confined to the home environment may not seem that serious, or the parents may feel that they should be able to handle this, and feel that somehow it is their fault if they cannot discipline their own teenager.
Once the teenagers' disruptive behavior begins to affect their performance at school, then other authorities may become involved and the parents are no longer entirely responsible for managing the teens' behavior alone. A teenager on the path to self destruction will get involved in minor criminal activity and probably start taking drugs. The teen whose behavior is now being influenced by substance abuse is now even more out of control. At this stage parents may try some outpatient therapy or short term stays at boot camp or recovery centers. The teenager returns home after these sessions and appears to be better, but the destructive behavior recurs and the parents feel that they are back to square one!
If a teenager is in a spiral of defiant, disruptive, delinquent behavior, then short term therapy is unlikely to have any impact. However awful the parents feel, and guilty that they cannot control their teenager, the priority here is the healing of the teenager and not anybody else's feelings. At this point, parents will consider residential treatment for their disturbed teenager, and despite the stigma attached to "sending your child away" it will often be the best solution.
A teenager is subject to many peer pressures and once in with a group of other teenagers, who are behaving badly, will find it very hard to break free of this influence. The only solution is to remove the teen from that environment, give them a breathing space to re-learn good habits and time to understand the triggers for their destructive aggressive behavior.
Residential treatment centers vary in style and are located all over the United States. Some specialize in therapy for particular teenage disorders, others focus on re-building the teenagers self-esteem and others are more focused on re establishing a framework for self discipline. Whichever residential treatment a parent chooses, they must expect to relearn some of their own behavior in order to provide the right environment for their teenager to come back to.