On 2004-04-19 22:04:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Yes, you can't change someone who doesn't want to change. What YOU don't get is that most people don't want to hide behind drugs or dangerous behavior the rest of their lives and don't know HOW to change. In the beginning, they may not want to change. Once they feel safe, and it's okay to be vulnerable, they choose to change. Maybe you felt or feel it's breaking their wills, their desires, or whatnot, but it's surrendering the control they've placed on themselves to be okay with making choices that are not about their friends, parents, teachers, or others that would love to see them be as miserable as they are. "
Wow. That's amazing. Who knew there was this vast conspiracy of people wanting to make young teens miserable. Probably they're the deceitful manipulators we hear so much about.
As I may have mentioned, I don't know ANYTHING about this school. What I do know something about, though, is child development. Children need their parents. No matter how crummy they are, children will almost always choose to live with a parent than with anyone else. Being without their parents is traumatic for them. My point was that if this friend couldn't have phone contact with her daughter because the daughter would cry and want to come home, there's a serious lack of concern for what's really important here -- the focus should be on the child getting better, not making mom's life easier. Mom made a decision to put the kid in this program, mom should have to deal with the consequences (her kid being unhappy with her).
Again, I am also concerned about the idea that an 11-13 year old would have issues that were independent from the way they were parented. Preteens are not ready to make major life choices -- having sex, whether to use drugs, etc. Healthy preteens understand this. So if a child is trying to make those decisions, it's usually because those decisions (or similar ones) have been forced upon her.
A great example of this is a mom who is out almost all weekend, every weekend, with a boyfriend. Or is home, but expects the kids to fend for themselves and not irritate the boyfriend/stepdad. Kids in that situation will feel, and rightly so, that if they are supposed to take care of themselves and make their own decisions in THAT instance, then they should be able to make their own decisions in other areas, too. However, mom invariably feels that the kid is "out of control." The answer is not that the kid get sent away to work on her "issues". The answer is that mom needs to get a clue and start being a parent. Sure, once she starts doing it, the kid is going to rebel, but that's the price you pay for temporary abdication of your responsibilities.
Virtually every severe "issue" that preteens have is either an undiagnosed medical problems (i.e. bipolar disorder) or a parenting problem. They just have not (or should not have) had enough exposure to the outside world to start making major choices. Fixing that problem is going to require more than sending the kid to boarding school, because they'll just come right back to the same crappy situation they were in before.