Tranquility Bay

I've been a child psych CS/therapist for many years now, and I've had first- and second-hand contact with a number of these programs. I also worked as a psych surveyor/investigator for my state for a number of years and part of my job was inspecting the "therapeutic camps" in our state. Yes, many of them (the private-for-profit outifts) will take any kid whose parents are willing to pay the exhorbitant fees, whether the kid actually doesn't have any serious problems at all, or whether the kid's problems are far more serious than what the camp is qualified and prepared to handle (they usually have some sort of disclaimer on the website and in the literature about how they don't take kids who have significant psychiatric problems -- but then they take them anyway ...) I understand that many of these parents are desperate and grasping at straws, but I put a lot of blame on them, too -- what kind of parent would actually leave her/his child in a facility where the staff meet you at the main gate (far from the actual facility), take the kid from you, and tell you that you (the parent) are not allowed inside to see what the living conditions are like? And tell you that you're not allowed to speak to your child by telephone while they're in the program? (I don't mean that the kid is not allowed to call you -- I mean that if you, the parent, call up the camp and tell them you want to speak to your child, they will tell you no, that's against the rules.) (This actually was happening in facilities I surveyed in my state, and parents didn't seem to be bothered by this -- BTW, the conditions we found in the "camps" were like prison camps.) The whole "transferring custody" issue is v. sticky legally, too -- who in their right mind would sign over legal custody of their child to a bunch of strangers, sight unseen???

As my state and others have gotten wise and increased the oversight and regulation of these type programs, more and more of them have moved "offshore" to places like Mexico and Jamaica, where the authorities don't pay so much attention to how kids get treated. And they're making a fortune -- these programs cost almost nothing to run, and they charge outrageous fees.

There's not even any good evidence (that I'm aware of) that these programs are even successful -- sure, the kids change their behavior while they're at the facility and at the mercy of the thugs who staff the place ... But the companies that own these places don't want any follow-up studies that would look at whether they have any lasting impact, and, in the cases I'm aware of, the kids have slowly reverted back to the same old behaviors after they got home (unless the parents have made significant changes during the same time period and the home environment is changed, which doesn't happen that often). Plain ol' fear is not a good long-term motivator for behavior change -- as soon as people aren't afraid anymore, they're no longer motivated to behave differently ...

The parent that struck me the most as needing a wake up call was the one who said he had twin boys with his new wife and his teenaged son was a "disruptive force" in the household. Yes, bringing a teenager into your new family is going to change the dynamic, Sherlock. It sounded to me like Dad just wanted to dispose of this kid and get on with his happy new life. None of this kid's behaviors sounded extreme at all. I've got a teenage son who is for the most part a good kid and God knows how much we love him, but honestly, there are days when I long for that sweet little boy he used to be. He can turn snarly and disrespectful in the blink of an eye, because that's what adolescents do. It hardly means we're going to send him away, though. I can't help wondering what the long term effects of this kind of treatment will be.

I don't know how any parent could send their child to one of these places. Why would you trust strangers to care for your child? How could you sleep at night not knowing what was happening to them, if they were afraid, sick, or hurt? I went through a difficult period with my teenage son when he was 16. He was defiant, had friends that I hated, experimented with alcohol and smoked pot. He ended up getting expelled from an alternative school and send to a juvenile justice program ran by the juvenile probation department. It was like a boot camp. The only reason he was sent there was because he was talking. Things got worse there. He had issues with math. He needed alot of tutoring, but at the end of the day when I picked him up he would be digging a hole in the dirt for an hour every day because that is what all the kids had to do. So guess what, he never got the help he needed for math. He fell even more behind. They had to eat standing up and they only had 5 minutes. They shaved his head the first day, when I picked him up, he had dried blood on his neck. I wonder if the blade was sterilized. He probaly should have bloodwork drawn. He failed a drug test-positive for marijuana. It was no shock. They suggested that he needed to be locked up in juvenile detention b/c it would make him think and give us a break, a vacation. My husband said no way, we got a juvenile attorney and they dropped the charges. What were the charges? I have no idea. They try to brainwash the child and the parent. Knowing what I know now, I would never agree or even send him to that place now. eventually, he ended up withdrawing from school and getting a GED. But he is better now and I am glad we didn't have him locked up. He was a teenager and teenagers experiment with things. Parents think the teenager is the only one to blame, but they're not. Parents need to change too and I learned how to not add to the conflict. I learned how to let him make the decisions even when those decisions resulted in negative consequences, but they were his consequences. He learned from his consequences. Parents need to parent. Don't give someone else the job of raising your child. Find out the problems and work it out together. It is not easy. It is exhausting. But you can do it. There are going to be rocky roads ahead but hang in there and fight for your child. Work to build a trusting relationship. Listen to them. Teenagers have feelings too. They are people just like you and me. But they need extra attention and love. They don't have to like you and you may not like them some days, but you will get through it.