I saw we give her advice too......LOL....
Author Topic: What to do with my daughter
Iris Graf
Junior Member
Member # 4716
posted June 13, 2005 11:21 PM
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My daughter who is a fraternal twin is 17 years old. She has always been a difficult child, very strong willed and difficult to say no to. She has punched in the walls in our house 5 or 6 times, run away for short periods (never over night) and last summer she started doing drugs and smoking cigarettes. Her friends are doing similar things. Her grades fell dramatically last year. She is also depressed despite being on 3 different medications and having seen a psychiatrist for years and also being in therapy with a psychologist. She has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and ADHD though I am not convinced about the bipolar disorder. She has lied to us a lot, stolen from us and pulled a knife 3 times while threatening to kill herself. She also used to cut herself on the arm. It got so bad that we sent her to live with friends of the family twice, once in the fall and now she is with them since May 18th. There is much more discipline in the environment she is now in and she does not act up. She also barely sees her friends which was my main goal in getting her out of the house. We have been given the opportunity of sending her to Thayer Learning Ctr., a bootcamp and school for troubled kids. I have an acquaintance whose son is there and this acquaintance is actually willing to pay my daugther's tuition. I was really thinking I would send her there but my husband was pretty much against it as was the friend she is staying with. There were a lot of logistical problems, like how to get her there against her will. Then my husband found a lot of negative things about Thayer on the web and when I looked, I did too. This pretty much decided me against it. I know that there are lots of other institutions for kids like this but we truly cannot afford the money and also I've seen a lot of negative things on line about them. We went to an educational consultant who told us to forget about schools connected with Wide World and then an acquaintance who is a respected doctor in our community told me that he sent his son to one of the WWASP schools for 2 years and that it really helped him. Also, Thayer will only take kids who are no older than 17 and 3 months which my daughter will soon be. I would appreciate any thoughts you might have on Thayer and leaving my daughter with these friends for an extended period of time. We are paying them for keeping her.
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