I need help for my troubled teen. Residential, Christian treatment, wilderness therapy, what works best?

Question

My daughter is 15 years old and we've been having a lot of trouble this past year. She has begun to experiment with drugs and is hanging out with other troubled teens. I've been told about some possible options like residential treatment, Christian boarding schools, wilderness therapy, etc. Which one do I choose?

Answer 1

if you send her to boarding school she will hate you. dont do that. get her a shrink or something.  

Answer 2

if ur daughter has been experience to drugs dont let her go out spend more time like Diner with family so a few times a week so she wont leave the house and possibly get in trouble b4 she start taking Heroine, Cocaine and other bad stuf for her body dat can harm her. Or if u want Go Therapy with her or something dat with keep her away from the bad friends

Answer 3

Don't you remember what high school was like? It's all about experimenting! I think if you giude her in the right direction she will be fine

Answer 4

Umm... at the moment she's just experimenting with who she is. Let her run it through it's course but just make sure that she knows you love her and you will always be there for her because the minute you let her even detect the faintess hint that you aren't is when it all starts to crumble.  

Answer 5

I think any kind of out-of-home treatment should be a very last resort.  Most kids who go to residential treatment centers are there because their home environment is not safe and supportive.  A few are sent there because their parents can no longer control them and they are a danger to others.  But it doesn't sound like either of those situations fit your daughter.  Have you tried grounding her, taking away privileges, trying to get her to talk?  If that hasn't worked, the next step would be counseling or therapy.  If she won't go, you can go without her.  The counselor can advise you on how to interact with her.  I wouldn't even think about sending her away unless I'd tried everything else and I was worried about her health and safety or that of others in the household.  I truly hope you can help her.  I understand how worried you must be.  

Answer 6

You need to do a lot of research into these options and get references from other parents. There are support groups on Yahoo and elsewhere which will give you an opportunity to have conversations with parents with similar situations. Talk to a psychiatrist or other mental health professional who may be treating your daughter as well.

Answer 7

i was the same teen. my mom made me look at all those andchose what i wanted to do. but i told her to go to h**l. and i was allways ditching school.so one day she told me i had to pay my own rent. i had to pay a 5th of the bills because there was 5 of us. i could bay 2 ways.go to school and get atlest c's or get a job. so i desided to get a job (16 years old) and she knew i wouldnt be abe to pay all my rent on min.wage and thats what she wanted me to see so i would finish school and one day get a good job. i ended up droping out and haveing to get 2 jobs to pay my rent i never had time for friends. so within 6 month i went to my mom crying and told her im sorry and i want to go back to school.

Answer 8

Which one do you choose...

Oh, there are so many, many decisions!

Straight-derived (and don't expect a facility to tell you that it is)? Straight was shut down for abuse.

CEDU-derived (and don't expect a facility to tell you that it is)? CEDU was shut down for abuse.

Aspen Education Group? Their Youth Care facility DIDN'T care when some kid died, screaming, of a bowel infarction. They said he died in his sleep (impossible- bowel infarctions are extremely painful and take hours to kill you).

Christian? All sorts of cultists and fringe groups throw the name of Christ around. Real Christians attempt to hold families together- never tear them apart.

WWASPS-derived? Four words: High Impact Dog Cages. Don't google that unless you want nightmares.

Thayer Learning Center? Kills kids and is being sued for it.

Even if there was a good one out there, how would you know? Shutting the abusive hellholes down is like playing whack-a-mole. Care to play five-bullet Russian Roulette with your kid?

It's a simple flaw in the paradigm. You CAN NOT send your kid somewhere to "be cured", especially not to people who don't have any credentials, and hope to get an actual good kid back. It simply does not work that way.

Now if your question had been "How do I deal with a defiant or drug-using teen" I would redirect you to Functional Family Therapy or some other proven, systemic model used by actual psychologists that doesn't promise absolute cures. Try again with a question like that and you'll probably get answers less horrifying than this one.

(Oh, and bring your kid in and have her read THIS ANSWER. See how it goes!)