May 17, 2012 by annelewis.

To Alienate or Not?

Janet, Mike’s mother, got a call from the school counselor on the night before the start of summer vacation. Another student had submitted an anonymous note expressing concern about Mike’s drug use.  Of course, the call worried Janet.  She knew she needed to do something, but didn’t want to do anything that would alienate her son.  She called me for traditional summer camp recommendations. I urged her to enroll Mike in a therapeutic wilderness program with a focus on substance abuse and agreed to meet Mike and talk to him about going.

            At our meeting, Mike made it clear that he had no interest in summer camp or much of anything else. He was a frightened boy slated to graduate from high school in two years and worried that he couldn’t make it in college.  He had nothing on which to “step out on”.  The comfortable life of a coastal California community had lulled him into a state of ennui.  He cautioned me that anything longer than a week away was “way too long.”  “Two or three weeks is way too long to be away from home.”

  I spoke again with Janet and repeated the recommendation of a therapeutic wilderness program. Her son needed an experience to help him explore his goals for himself and devise a plan leading to the goals.  He

 needed to meet difficult challenges from which he could gain a sense of achievement.  And this achievement needed to be the result of his own efforts.  Janet was unconvinced, “I’ll sleep on it and call you tomorrow,”

The next morning there was a message on my voice mail, “I cannot ask my son to do something he doesn’t want to do.  I haven’t alienated him.  I cannot alienate him.  I think we’ll take a short trip together, maybe go gliding together or take flying lessons. Or maybe an intellectual or studio experience.  He likes pottery and photography. What he really wants is an apartment and to be on his own.  What do you think?”

I thought not.

A year later, Mike’s mother called again.  Mike was in juvenile hall after having been convicted of selling drugs.  Still Janet comforted herself that she had not alienated her son and that they were geographically close to each other, although he was under lock and key.  She, too, was in a locked and gated community, but one quite different from juvenile hall.

Mike finished his sentence and Janet set him up in the apartment. He was a senior in high school, but he didn’t have the credits to graduate.  Before GED studies could be arranged, Mike had a relapse. To his credit, he didn’t want to go downhill again.  He asked his mom to find a treatment center.  Though she was capable of affording private treatment, she refused.  She didn’t want her son away from her.  She stalled.  Mike voluntarily readmitted himself to the juvenile detention facility.

Janet didn’t alienate Mike.  But what might have happened, if she had…for awhile?

1.              Mike might have had the benefit of therapy which uncovered the root of his need for drugs.

2.              In the course of treatment, Mike might have been introduced to something which interested him and ignited a passion or love which would have made drugs less attractive.

3.              Mike might have completed high school or the GED as a part of treatment.

4.              Mike might have matured through an emotional growth curriculum to the point that he genuinely could make his own way.

5.              Mike might have individuated, become his own person, and returned to establish a satisfying and mature relationship with his mother.

None of these possibilities happened.  As Henry Ford said,  ”If you need a machine and don’t buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don’t have it.”   Janet paid a price for Mike not having treatment.  Was it worth it?

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May 29, 2011 by annelewis.

We’ve just had a serious health diagnosis in our family and I’ve found myself once again a stranger in a strange land.  Like the worried parents with whom I speak everyday,  I’ve been thrust into a world of confusion.  It’s similar to those times eighteen years ago when we were deeply worried about our  son’s struggles.  We did not know where to turn.

Yesterday after returning from the doctor’s office,  I turned to Google.  I was desperate to learn about the disease and its treatment.  What could we do before things get worse?  How could we avoid mistakes that can’t be rectified.  We didn’t want the horse to get out of the barn.  We wanted to turn over every stone.  We needed a sound plan.

I found pages and pages of information on the Internet.  How could I separate marketing and pie-in-the-sky hope from sound and applicable information?  We needed expert medical advice to walk us through the options.

Suddenly, our crisis has brought me closer to the parents with whom I talk everyday.  I have a raw and fresh understanding of their fears.  Our paths are different and our fears are different, but the steps in the process of finding solutions are similar.   We need unbiased expert medical advice.  Parents considering residential treatment for their children need unbiased expert advice on therapeutic schools and treatment centers.

I am going to try to help.  In that vein, I plan to make regular additions to this blog.  The additions will include comments and observations on developments in the treatment and guidance of struggling children, adolescents, and young adults.

I hope you’ll feel I’m by your side.

 Anne

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March 29, 2007 by annelewis.

Welcome to Teen Help Center and my blog on special schools. If you are interested in the development of special schools, what they do, and how they do it, I hope you will find this site useful.

To begin, you should know that I am an educational consultant. I advise parents whose children will benefit from enrolling in a unique or special school, or from a customized educational program. I’ve had my educational consulting practice for fourteen years, and started it as a result of the search for a school for my own son. The search became a calling and a career change for me.

During the first year of establishing my practice, a father stopped me short and said, “Any parent who comes to you has a child with a special need. It doesn’t matter whether the child is brilliant and the school can’t keep up, or that the child is floundering. Both are instances of special needs, and you should be able to help both. Find the school that matches the child.”

Students who are both capable and floundering are common in my practice. It was the same situation with my own son fourteen years ago. He had shut down. His father and I could not reach him. Despite being bright, he did not want to go to school. He seemed anxious. Some days he seemed hopeless.

We tried tutors. We tried lessons. We tried counselors. We tried the clergy. We tried pediatricians. We tried psychologists. We tried psychiatrists.

In a state of desperation, we took our son on his sixteenth birthday to a new psychiatrist. He interviewed my husband and me and then our son. After a brief talk with him, the psychiatrist called us back into his office and said, “Your son believes you are too protective. He wants a car for his birthday. It will give him the freedom and separation he needs. You should get him the car.”

We did. If only the car had solved our problems! I would not be writing this today.

There was no simple solution for us, just as there had been no simple beginning to the problem. In our case, my husband and I had different parenting styles. Our son, though highly intelligent, had an undiagnosed learning disorder. And losses in our family rocked the foundation of my belief in the world as I had known it.

Many parents share with me a sense of loss in their own lives. The loss doesn’t have to be the deaths of children as it was in mine. Parents tell me about losing the dream of the child they had hoped to have and the family they had hoped to create.

Parenthood has been compared to travel. The comparison is apt in that both involve surprises and require an adaptable mindset. A long anticipated trip to Italy may be diverted to Holland. It’s a different experience, but Holland has its own satisfactions.

In our journey, we found a school for our son, but it was not the school we had hoped to find. Fortunately for parents in the year 2007, there are many more schools from which to choose. In the days when I started my practice most kids were seen simply as oppositional. They were viewed as wild horses, who needed to be broken. The schools were set up to confront and change behavior. Now there is a deeper understanding of why kids behave as they do, and current schools can tailor themselves to these changes.

So, in this space you can read my insights into the world of special schools and how they go about helping kids and parents. How can they be better? How do they define success?

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