Hyde has a 5 week program that kids can attend to see if they like the school, but it is actually required if summer is coming up. It takes place in the summer, and after the 5 weeks, Hyde makes the choice to accept you or not and the parents will decide if the school is right for their child. There is a fee for the summer program, though Im not sure what it was exactly. If your wondering if Hyde will accept certain students, I can tell you that they will accept anyone even if they were both mentally and physically retarded and/or had substance abuse issues. They will accept any kid who walks through their door. I came to this website to tell my story at Hyde in the most truthful and informative way I could, and I encourage anyone who has attended Hyde to do so as well. Alot of people here are being a little vague about their Hyde experience, and I encourage you to site specific experiences that you have had, as these will help parents who are considering Hyde to know what Hyde would be like for their child without the school giving them a vague outline of what it is like to be at Hyde. If you visit the Hyde website, you will see that they give a very vague description of what they have to offer to kids and what issues the kids have when they get there, as wel as if they are equipped to deal with those issues. If my parents and I had known what it was like at Hyde and if the staff had been truthful about what is was going to be like at the school's interview, I would have not even considered attending the summer challenge. I knew nothing about 2/4 at the interview, I knew nothing about their "accountabilities", I knew nothing about how kids were treated behind closed doors, when the parents were not around. I remember when it was towards the end of the summer challenge and the school was getting into heavy duty cleaning, organizing, and primping for Family Weekend when the parents would arrive. There was gourmet food set on to tables for the parents, the dorms were cleaned, but what was most eye-catching was how the staff and faculty started to get into their "relaxed care-free mood", a visage to appeal to the parents. They displayed no anger, no agression, no confrontations with any of the students on this particular day. I was relieved that no one had confronted me or any of the students on this day, but at the same time I kept in my mind thinking to myself "Is this really how truthful everyone here is? Is this there truthful philosphy that they hold themselves standard to?" And I knew that it wasn't. I knew that this is how they pulled so many parents in, with their discovery groups they appeared to offer free counseling group-therapy to parents and their child, when actually counseling isn't even a part of the Hyde School. So many kids come to this school to turn their lives around, with hope that they can gain confidence and motivation in themselves. When in fact, those feelings of inferiority or whatever they were dealing with pre-Hyde are suppressed deeper and deeper inside themselves when they learn that they have stop cold-turkey their bulimia, or cutting, or alcohol/drug abuse because there will be consequences at Hyde. I remember this one boy at Hyde who had serious anger issues that he had no control over. From what I knew of him, his parents were divorced and his mother had re-married a different man, which could have been the possible underlying issues of his anger. He grew up without a father, and his father was later replaced with a starnger. Understandable, right? But Hyde refuses to understamd cases like this, and when the boy got in fights at the school if someone rubbe dhim the wrong way, the faculty stated bluntly that he shall stop his violent acts against other kids or he was going to to be "held accountable". When the fights with other kids continued, the boy was asked what he planned to do about his agression if he were to attend the school. This was during discovery grups on family therapy, and everyone was listening. The boy said " I guess I will have to learn to stop my anger, I just don't know how. I guess I will have to face whatever consequences I am given for my actions." I felt so sorry for him, because I knew that 1) He didn't know the root of where his anger was coming from and 2)Hyde faculty refused to acknowledge that he neede therapy/counseling rather than consequences and accountabilities. He became more and more voilent as the consequences were given, because his anger was built up with no safe outlet or release (therapy). I also remember a girl, she had a learning disorder, and her mother had been misinformed that Hyde was equipped to deal with kids with learning disbilities. She was also a cutter, so it was obvious that she repressed her feelings and kept things inside most of the time. I could see that she was having a hard time at the school, she took alot of things literally partly because of her learning disorder I'm assuming. She couln't tell time unless there were digital clocks around, so she was late to functions on the campus most of the time. When she told a staff member of her innability to tell time and attempted to advocate for herself by explaining her learning disability, she was told "Well, then you ask someone to teach you how to tell time so that you won't be late. Your a smart girl, and you can learn to tell time if you wanted to. You should stop trying to minipulate me or anyone else with your learning disorder, because you are as capable as everyone else here of doing everything that you are asked to do". I was shocked at this response that was not sympathetic in the least nor was it helpful for this girl to learn that all she could do about her inability of things was to find a way to cope at this school. The fact that she was a cutter also concerned me, because I knew that she would have to keep alot more things to herself at Hyde than she had at home. She was my roommate, and I remember hearing her cry in the middle of the night, and sometimes crying herself to sleep. The fact is that Hyde is incapable of dealing with kids who have emotional issues, which is the underlying causes of substance abuse for the most part. They are also incapable of dealing with kids who have learning disorders. In fact, as someone else here has said, I think that the only kid that Hyde is capable of dealing with is the kid who is defiant, has no emotional issues, and is acting out and needs to be sent to a bootcamp environment to straighten out. This unfortunately, applies to a very small percentage of the kids who are attending Hyde School.
