WHAT NOW?
By Marcy Dorfman-Salenieks, LCSW Each time I get a call from a parent of a struggling teen, I’m all too familiar with the questions, concerns, and powerful emotions I encounter. And while there’s no way to adequately express a level of understanding of what it’s like to be in their shoes (I was such a parent), my goal is to come as close as possible. As therapeutic educational consultants, we are approached by parents of teens in pain, immense pain. They are looking for options. It’s highly likely they have been passengers on a therapeutic journey that led nowhere. They have reached the end of the road, and literally don’t know where to turn. Educational consultants have a broad and specific knowledge base of therapeutic and academic options throughout the country for teens and young adults. We provide safety and support by being “in the know.” Traveling across the country, assessing programs for their quality, expertise, services, staff, environment, and facilities, we provide assurance parents need that their children are in safe, professional hands. Adolescents and young adults who are struggling, present with a wide range of behavioral, emotional, psychological, and academic issues. How does a parent gauge whether a decline in any one of these areas is cause for concern? What does a “crisis” look like? Just as the situation is different for every teen and young adult, so too, is every parent’s threshold or limit to cope with it. Some of the useful questions we have found for parents to consider are these: • Has your child had a long treatment history and therapeutic involvement, with only marginal gains? • Are you fearful of your child’s anger? • Are your other children fearful, or being adversely affected by your teen or young adult’s behavior? • Has your child had recent contact with the legal system? • Is there a widening gap between your child’s development and that of his or her peers? • Is your child associating with negative peers and viewing them as more influential than you? • Is there an escalation of anxiety, depression, defiance, or substance abuse? • Do you worry that your child will hurt himself or herself or others in some way by remaining on the current path? • Is your child making decisions you don’t approve of? • Is your child isolating from family and others? • Have you lost parental control? • Is your child running your home? Parents who are overwhelmed are what I refer to as “near-sighted.” Understandably, they are often too close to the situation to see what lies ahead. Therapists who work with families are often in a key position to have the “long-distance vision” that parents desperately need. There are several key questions therapists and parents can discuss together, when looking at a struggling teen or young adult’s current functioning: • What do you imagine life will be like for your child in ten years, if he/she remains on this course? • What will your family life look like? • Do you imagine your child being employable? Getting married? • Does your child accept any responsibility for his/her actions? • Does he/she have insight into thoughts and behaviors? • Is your child close to age 18, with no improvement in sight? • Are academics and a chance for college acceptance being affected? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, it may be time to
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consider a more clinically intensive therapeutic setting. Therapeutic wilderness programs and therapeutic boarding schools are two of the most effective residential settings into which therapeutic educational consultants place teens and young adults. Each teen or young adult is matched with a school or program ideally suited for specific academic and psychological needs. In addition, parents who are unclear about their child’s issues, root causes, and next steps needed for treatment can take advantage of short-term options such as clinical assessment programs that specialize in conducting comprehensive neuropsychological and psychoeducational testing. Results illuminate an accurate diagnostic picture of a child using a team of clinical experts. This is often a helpful tool in more complex cases, when local testing still leaves a parent in a quandary, when there has been a significant change in the child’s functioning, or after a particularly unsettling event. Parents need to feel that they have exhausted their local therapeutic resources before making the monumental leap to a residential setting. However, once that point has been reached, there are a plethora of schools and programs that specialize in accommodating specific student profiles. Issues such as substance abuse, disordered eating, anxiety, depression, oppositional defiance, mood swings, self-harm, adoption and attachment, trauma, school refusal, internet addiction, etc. are addressed by schools and programs with specific expertise. Their therapeutic approaches are varied, as are their levels of clinical sophistication, student populations, array of therapeutic services (i.e., traditional and experiential therapies), extracurricular activities, and location, to name a few. When working with an educational consultant, parents will visit schools and programs recommended by the consultant. Ideally, outpatient therapy and or a change of school may make all the difference to provide what’s needed to get a teen or young adult back on track. But if outpatient therapy fails to achieve results, then knowing that these schools and programs exist is invaluable and comforting. Many parents struggle with the decision to pursue a residential setting for their child, because they simply don’t have the proper broad knowledge of top quality programs across the country. A school or program recommended by an educational consultant is going to be clinically sophisticated, safe, nurturing, accredited, and a member of a national association which holds its members to the highest standards. Safety, clinical and academic programming, staff, facilities, and activities are all routinely evaluated by consultants, whose support and guidance is continuous throughout Continued on page 30
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