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Facing no other options - Parents send their unruly children out of country to specialty boarding schools
2003-07-14
by Lori Varosh
Journal Reporter
It was an excruciating decision to send their son 1,200 miles from home for an undetermined length of time to a walled center in Mexico that specializes in behavior modification.
But Virginia and Dexter Day of Redmond believed they had no other option.
They had already sent Gabe to counselors and psychiatrists. They had pressed charges when he took their car at age 13. They had tried anger-management classes, specialized drugs and the advice of a tough-love type of organization, all to no avail.
Then Redmond police called one May night in 2002, saying they'd found Gabe, then 14, clammy and blue, slumped outside a Redmond apartment building, likely overdosed on marijuana laced with embalming fluid.
``We knew we had to intervene in a more direct manner,'' Virginia Day said. ``You know you have to do something big to save your child's life.''
Parents they knew had sent their kids to the ``specialty boarding school'' called Casa by the Sea in Baja California, Mexico, and had been ecstatic with the results.
The Days researched its umbrella organization, World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, and decided to give the place a try.
Such schools for troubled kids have come under fire recently for extreme tactics -- kidnapping kids, using handcuffs and solitary confinement, for instance. But to numerous Eastside families, they've been a godsend, Day said.
``It's hard for people who haven't experienced a meltdown in their own family to appreciate the special needs these kids have,'' she said. ``Most kids end up thanking their parents for giving them an opportunity to have a life.''
Parents are forced to look to out-of-state or Central American schools, in part because it's illegal in Washington to restrain a child who is not accused of a crime.
Even if they're being sentenced for a crime, ``you can give them credit for inpatient treatment, but you can't order it,'' said Patricia Clark, presiding judge of King County Juvenile Court.
Washington parents, she said, are prohibited by statute from forcing children over the age of 12 into any kind of treatment program without their consent.
The law ``is very different from other states, and causes a whole raft of concerns and issues,'' Clark said. ``The issue is: How does a mentally-ill child or a substance-addicted child gain the necessary skills to make a decision about whether they need treatment?''
Without out-of-state schools, kids would get no help at all, said Day, who knows of a half dozen Eastside families in the Changes Parent Support Network, to which she belongs, who have sent kids to such behavioral-modification schools in recent years.
Attitude and behavior problems
Richard Browder of Bellevue is one.
His daughter had been a chronic runaway with attitude and behavior problems when he sent her to Casa by the Sea two years ago. She was 15.
At first, she complained about the food and bugs. She tried to lay a guilt trip on her parents, especially for leaving her there on her 16th birthday.
By the time she returned home 18 months later, however, she had changed, Browder said.
``We got my daughter back.''
She grew to love the Mexican Indian woman who worked in the laundry. She taught the woman English and learned Spanish in return. She learned to be of service, he said.
When she returned home, she felt lonely for a while, separated from her old drug-using crowd. But she told Browder, ``I have my values. When people come along with similar values, I'll have new friends.''
Not a week later, Browder said, she did.
Today, six months after her return, she's very focused, Browder said. She earned a nearly 3.5 grade-point average in her last high school term. She lettered in track. She got a job. She regularly attends church, and volunteers once a month to feed the homeless.
``She really has some life skills now,'' he said. ``That's the thrust of the program. It teaches them to believe in themselves.
``It's the best thing we ever did,'' said Browder, who asked his daughter if she wanted to be interviewed for this story. She declined.
`Probably die in the streets'
A criminal psychologist advised Aidan and Bernadette Maher of Kirkland to do something fast, or their son ``would probably die in the streets.''
Stealing cars had gotten him into the criminal justice system. His parents had put him in drug rehab and he'd run away. He ran away from home constantly, 13 times in as many months, Aidan Maher said.
``We realized, he's not running away from home, he's running away to do what he wanted, in other words, abuse drugs,'' Maher said. ``He was a very surly, noncommunicative, hostile young man.''
The Mahers sent him to Casa by the Sea because he was always good at languages, because living in a foreign country could deter his running and because, with lower land values and salaries, the cost is considerably lower than in the States.
Similar programs legal in states like Iowa, Utah and California can cost $4,000 a month. Because of lower land and labor costs, overseas schools are less expensive -- about $2,500 a month at Casa.
A teen escort service took him in handcuffs from the Juvenile Detention Center in Seattle to San Diego, and from there to Mexico. After a rocky start, he went on to an even stricter program at Tranquility Bay in Jamaica.
It was a full year before the Mahers saw him again.
``The boy we met three weeks ago was a completely different person,'' Maher said in late June, his voice thickening. ``He had completely turned around.''
Now 17, their son seems to have become ``a very positive young man, very at ease with himself,'' Maher said. He took personal responsibility, seemed to understand his parents' insistence that he stay in the program longer and was very loving.
``Emotionally, it was just great. We were thrilled.''
Maher didn't want his son's name used so that his former friends -- all drug users -- won't be able to keep track of him.
`Values, integrity, honor'
The Utah-based World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools encompasses eight independently owned schools for troubled youth in four states and three foreign countries, though the government recently closed one in Costa Rica.
According to the company's Web site, at
http://www.wwasp.com/, the schools ``teach values, integrity, honor, and respect for authority. They are specifically designed to help teens replace inappropriate attitudes, behaviors and habits with new, productive ones.''
Maher, Browder and Day all emphasized that a key component of the WWASPS program is its parallel seminars for parents.
``This program is the only one focused on the whole family,'' Browder said.
``The idea is, they come home to a different home,'' Maher said, ``so you don't repeat patterns.''
After having broken his back, undergone a heart transplant and lost his business, Browder said, he was ``not a very happy person,'' he said. ``I had a lot of crap going on.
``I was short-tempered,'' he said, and it affected his daughter's behavior. ``People need to take a good hard look at themselves. Actions produce results you don't like.''
Though for a time, he was skeptical, Browder came to appreciate the behavior-modification program.
``It didn't just change my daughter, it changed my wife and me,'' Browder said.
``Our family used to be dysfunctional. Now we have fun.''
Installing discipline
At Casa by the Sea, the rules are strict, parents say.
Kids are allowed no condiments for their food, for instance, until they pass level 1. Tennis shoes are not permitted until they achieve the highest level, level 4. (It's hard to run wearing flip-flops on dirt, Browder explained.)
The whole point, Browder said, is to instill discipline. ``Most kids desire to have boundaries and rules.'' They begin to appreciate the freedom they had at home.
``They really earn all that; they earn self-respect.''
Although it takes an average of 18 to 24 months to complete the course, some take as few as 14 or as many as 32 months to graduate. Some never do.
``It's definitely not for everybody,'' Browder said.
There are collateral benefits, however. Browder knows of one boy at Casa whose two buddies were also methamphetamine users. They quit meth and got their grades up, he said, ``because they knew they'd be next'' to be sent away to school.
Marijuana in sixth grade
Long after the fact, the Days learned Gabe had been introduced to marijuana by grade six. By junior high, he'd graduated to methamphetamines.
He also had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, a common diagnosis for children who later get into trouble, Day said.
``They already tend to be impulsive and predisposed to problems in school,'' she said. ``They have problems socially because they're behind in social development. And they're at risk for self-medicating.''
Gable began to have problems respecting the rules at home. He'd be absent all weekend, partying. He wasn't doing well in school and he finally quit going.
Then he overdosed.
Though Gabe did not resist when 16 people from the Changes Parent Support Network, a Redmond-based group to which the Days belong, brought two vans to accompany him to the airport, many kids do.
``Typically, kids are angry. They don't go willingly, because they're out of control,'' Day said. ``The party's over.''
When he arrived at Casa by the Sea last July, Gabe chose telling words to describe his self-image: ``skateboarder, clown, pothead,'' Day learned later.
In the nearly 12 months since, Day said, he has come to consider himself a ``clean, strong, intelligent young man.''
In weekly letters and once-a-month phone calls home, he was encouraged to pose uncomfortable questions about family dynamics.
It was, in turn, encouraging for the Days ``to get a proactive letter from a kid who for years did not let us into his thinking process.
``I'm really, really proud because he's working now,'' Day said.
Gabe is still in Mexico, and unavailable for an interview.
The Days and other local families represent the tip of the iceberg, Day believes.
``There is so much pain out there, it is phenomenal,'' with kids involved in eating disorders, self-mutilation, drugs, she said.
``The kids know something is not right. For some, it's a relief when they see their parents have finally done something.''
Lori Varosh can be reached at
http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sited/ ... tml/137370