http://www.isaccorp.org/documentsam.asp#daClive McFarlane
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
March 29, 2006
So what do you do when you think your teenager is slipping away — skipping school, hanging with the wrong crowd, experimenting with illegal substances, falling further and further behind academically, and paying less and less attention to you?
For one Blackstone mother, the answer, when she caught her 15-year-old cutting class, was to buy a chain and two padlocks and shackle the daughter’s ankles to keep track of her.
When the two went outside the house, the girl was shackled to the mother’s wrist. At least that is how the police found them after making a routine traffic stop recently.
The Department of Social Services is looking into it, and who knows, if the parent’s tactic passes muster, padlocks and chains will become the next can’t-miss investment for those looking to corral troubled teenagers.
At the moment, of course, many parents and guardians are turning to the booming for-profit boot camps and behavior modification programs that have sprung up in this country and around the globe.
These programs, euphemistically called therapeutic boarding schools, wilderness programs and residential treatment centers, can cost from $2,000 to $8,000 a month. But what is cost when you are trying to save a kid’s life?
A year ago, Paula Bryant, a Shrewsbury resident, returned home to find that her 16-year-old son had been sent away by his uncle, who had custody of the young man, to the Red Cliffs ASCENT School, a boot camp in Utah, and later to the Discovery Academy, a clinical boarding school and wilderness program, also in Utah.
Among other things, the Discovery Academy sells parents and guardians on its higher-than-the-national-average SAT scores, and an equine-assisted therapy program that uses “the principles of natural horsemanship as a pattern for productive personal relationships.â€