I am deeply dissappointed about some of these postings. How dare any "non-professional", seemingly well meaning person, give "professional" advice to parents, family, guenuinely interested parties as to whether they should actually use the help of any type of facilty for their child.
Which of you has admitted your child to a hospital with deep self-inflicted cuts over their body, only to have them come home in 10 days with some prescription drugs to take, but no real solution and the same violent, confused, morbid demeanor they left with??
Which of you has sat repeatedly with law enforcement at your home waiting to find out of your child was kidnapped, killed, "harmed, only to find out, they "ran away", again and the "next time", they go in fron of a judge as an "out of control teen"??
Which of you has sat night after night, week after week, your child (who has threatened to murder you)on the couch in your bedroom with you between them and the door to prevent them from "running away to some criminals that have twisted their minds around some sicko behavior as a coping mechinism", with your child on "contract" with you that they will not kill themselves that night??? Terrified to close your eyes and sleep for months and as a single parent, the only relief is their next hospital admittance, with the "quiet rooom" as a means of "controlling" your troubled kid?? With other children in your home who need to continue on in their lives also and the constant inability to actually be there for them?
Which of you has done this through five in-patient local hospitals and local out-patient programs hoping against hope that you DO NOT have to "send your child away"?? Trying to NOT have to use a educational consultant, praying to God to be able to keep your child close so that you can fulfill your responsibility to "keep your child safe from arm", but watching them "slip away" from you??
How dare you act in the place of a professional?
For all the bad senior professionals out there and there are many, at many of the various top notch institutions, there are also dedicated, well-meaning top notch professionals that have the gutts to finally say when enough is enough and tell a parent when after a year of six different local institutions NOT working, you finally have to bite the bullet and send your child away.
I am the parent and it is MY responsibility to discern if a professional is right or not. I have a "gutt" feeling about my child and I "know" when they are wrong. It is MY job to advocate for my child, not the govenments, the psychiatrists, not alot of misguided, "well-meaning" parents/former students"!
In 1983, I lost a child in a drowing accident. He was 14 and a "troubled" teen and I did not have the maturity nor the perspective to intervene the way I should have and through his own "challenged" decision making, he chose to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and didn't make it.
I DID NOT want to "send my daughter away." IT WAS THE LAST THING I WANTED TO DO and I exhausted without any "seeming" avaiable resources, all avenues, before "placing" my child at a program that I spent incredible time researching, before I agreed on that program.
The school system, the therapists, the incompetence of my local medical facilities, which had the best insurance coverage available, etc., all came to a point in my daughter's life, where it was "life or death" for her.
How dare you all be so callous.
Do not attempt to "fix a problem", by causing a bigger problem.
There are some horrrible treatment facilities out there, but there are also some treatment places that without them, alot of children would be dead.
There are incompetant government oversight officials who have no idea how to determine if a facility is competant or not.
There are so many professionals in the industry that their only concern is to protect themselves from "liability" and that it is tragic, but I beg both the parents and the "former students" to not destroy a needed hope for some very desperate parents and the children that deserve a "great life" and the best possible available therapuetic interventions you all decide DO WORK!!!
The wilderness program "Walkabout" in Utah, hard as they were on my daughter and as much as she, at the time hated them, were life-saving angels.
During 9/11, she was there and I could not even talk to her and I thought I would die from fear for her safety. I took her 15th birthday cake on 10/5/2001 out to Utah, flying through airports with young men with machine guns "protecting" empty airplanes, to get her a cake to the top of the mountain where she was, for her birthday and her graduation from that program.
Instead of, after two months coming home, she then went to another tremendous TBS, that SHE says, was so helpful to her to help her get out of her confusion.
That was another nine months of loss of our lives together and I achknowledge the tremendous hardship she endured to have to be away from home, away from even the total change in this country that she never even knew happened till she came home in 2004.
The last TBS she was in should be closed down and I hope there are people strong enough with wisdom to accomplish that, but for us, our challenges are not over and that is not where we fit in this puzzle.
Our story is long and difficult, as are most of the stories of the families who truly NEED to have high-claiber TBS's with therapies that do work.
So make yourselves useful, write the President in mass, go stand in front of the White House and demand change, but you volunteer as the oversight "commission".
You, as experienced parents and "former students", go do something positive and drop in on these palces and demand to have "tours" and have the places be accountable to you as now heathy, mature adults who alot of you are parents in your own rights!!!
I would trust you, but I don't want the government, the psychiatrists, the lawyers, idiots who have no experience telling me about what is a good place to send my child.
My daughter has been home a year and she is a magnificent, mature, responsible young woman that I am tremendously proud of for all her acheivements.
There were some very bad people in this story that I know God will take care of them in His time(unless, as a better solution, they actually stop being horrible people and make the amends they should). I am deeply enouraged by the activities on these forums, but I am also concerned that this push against "ALL" treatment is tremendously misguided and the incredible rantings that are such a waste of time and energy.
(Has anyone noticed it's spring and the flowers are BLOOMING!!!)
The right answer is for those of you that have your lives back to demand to be involved, as with your experience and perspective, you are the right people to provide oversight on the industry.
The kids that NEED treatment, NEED a place to go and get unconfused. Maybe it is only 20? 40% of the kids that are being treated, but figure that out AND MAKE THIS INDUSTRY DO THE RIGHT THING.
YOU ARE OUR HOPE AND ANSWER TO THE NEXT GENERATION OF KIDS WHO NEED A BETTER ANSWER!!
DON'T THROW THE BABY OUT WITH THE BATHWATER.
God Bless you all and I wish for you peace and joy and the progess into the love that our family has the priviledge to enjoy.
