http://www.theoaklandpress.com/stories/ ... 6006.shtml'Brat Camp' not an easy decision
Web-posted Jul 26, 2005
By DAVE GROVES
Of The Oakland Press
Some Oakland County residents familiar with troubled teens say fans of ABC's new reality television show "Brat Camp" may not get a full appreciation of how difficult intervention decisions can be.
The show follows a number of teens enrolled in a highly structured, emotionally supportive wilderness camp that offers individual and group therapy.
Elizabeth Gordon, a Bloomfield Hills-based psychologist and educational consultant who has researched hundreds of similar camps and schools across the country, said parents who seek these interventions often endure tremendous stress and frustration first.
"I'm usually not their first stop," she said. "I'm usually the last stop - the one parents make when they're at their wits' end."
Many families employ counselors, church interventions and social service programs only to see their troubled teens continue to act out at home, get in trouble at school and sometimes even encounter legal problems.
At the same time, limited awareness of intervention programs, strained financial resources and difficult emotional issues stand in the way of parents finding help for their children.
"Most feel like failures," said Diane Kimber, president of the Bloomfield Hills-based Spirit Foundation, which assists parents seeking help.
"People don't like to tell those awful secrets for fear people will think less of them. What they don't know is that this is far more common than they imagine."
Commerce Township resident Nancy Stachecki decided to send her son, Robert, to a therapeutic intervention program three years ago after he became belligerent, disrespectful and confrontational. His attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder contributed to behavior issues that resulted in disciplinary action at school.
"You need to realize that you have not failed as a parent, because you cannot change anybody else," Stachecki said. "They've got to want to change themselves."
She and other parents have realized that they can support their children by placing them in programs designed to foster a desire to change. Discovering where to send a child, however, is a complicated decision.
Stachecki said she sent her son to schools in South Carolina and Utah before learning that she was misled about a lack of qualified therapists and a non-supportive environment that also neglected Robert's educational needs.
"It was, basically, like a prison," she said of one school.
Gordon said that while there is a gamut of quality programs designed to meet the needs and interests of all kinds of students, there are also options that can actually be detrimental to children.
"Don't just surf the Web to find something, because there are programs out there that are not good programs, but have a lot of marketing dollars," she said.
With Gordon's help, Stachecki said she found a highly supportive, effective program that is helping her son flourish. With hopes of eventually becoming a sports journalist or a lawyer, Robert plans to attend a college preparatory boarding school in the fall.
Intervention programs such as the one Stachecki employed can cost thousands of dollars per month, though she said she has obtained financial aid and education loans to help offset tuition.
Kimber, who also put a child through a costly intervention program, said, "I looked at it like, 'If this was cancer, I would spend my last nickel to save my child's life.' Really, this is no different."
Both Gordon and Kimber said any parent growing frustrated with an inability to address prolonged emotional or behavioral problems can benefit from exploring intervention programs. The longer parents wait, in fact, the less hope they may have to help children approaching the independence legal adulthood brings.
"They really need to make a decision pretty quickly as to what the extent of the intervention is going to be, because it is going to end when the child turns 18," Kimber said.
"Stachecki said she sent her son to schools in South Carolina and Utah before learning that she was misled about a lack of qualified therapists and a non-supportive environment that also neglected Robert's educational needs."
I think we can guess which "schools" those were.
