I learned an invaluable lesson from my experience with sending my daughter to Hyde, which was, by the way, highly recomended by several mental health professionals. My daughter has a pervasive LD which affects her co-ordination,her sense of time and space, her reading of body language , and the list goes on. She is highly intelligent and on the surface her 'quirks' may appear to be behavioral.I mistakenly thought that she needed to learn how to survive in the real world, learning disabilities or not, and Hyde, I was told ,would be the place to teach her how to 'self advocate'. I couldn't have picked a more inappropriate placement for her, since none of her difficulties were ever considered.She was bombarded with punitive measures for much of what was not her fault or for her inabliltiy to play the social games that her peers and interns played ,with her being the dupe. What was even more alarming was that many of the kids there do have severe emotional /behavioral problems stemming from external sources rather than a primary neurological source, and while Hyde's philosopy may help some of these kids, the kids who have internalized emotional fallout stemming from a physical or nuerological disability , such as a learning disability ,stand to lose far more than their own self -respect and self worth. This type of negative, punitive environment for those with LD'S could be a death sentence. My first impression of Hyde was that it reminded me of Amway with its therapeutic meetings that seemed to camouflage the hidden agenda of the 'LEADER'. I looked at this with some amusement, but when I saw first-hand that some of the kids there were being punished for behavior that was a direct result of their LD, I realized how destructive this type of school was for my daughter. She went into Hyde mildly depressed with no history of drug or alcohol abuse and certainly no suicidal intent. After being there for less than 2 months , she was routinely cutting her wrists. Her story might have ended in tragedy, had I listened to Hyde and stopped ' making excuses for my daughter and get with the program'.What I did learn was an invaluable lesson for myself and also for those parents who have a child with a primary LD. The best school is one that has a population of kids with LD'S or related disorders so that you know the staff and teachers and all those invloved with your son or daughter have a 'working 'experience and are trained specifically to work with the specific LD's. There also should be no behavioral mod programs set in place specifically to break ' bad behavioral habits or tendencies', since the strategies that best work for kids with LD'S with emotional and behavior fallout are very different than those which are used with kids with a primary psychiatric / emotional disorder. I doubt very seriously if Laura Gauld would have her child at Hyde if he were diagnosed with say, Aspergers or high functioning autism or any related disorder or learning disablity , unless there was a very supportive, nurturing environment within the school, which is not what comes to mind when I think of Hyde. Be warned if this profile sounds like your child's, steer clear of schools like Hyde. I remember one boy there, who had a LD, whose one characteristic was 'impulsivity'. He had vowed to 'accept his consequence', whenever he had acted inappropriately, without anger or a sense of injustice, as was his tendency in the past. I remember thinking 'how sad', that the school isn't focusing on the cause of his behavior, rather than being bent on changing it with punitive measures. I often wonder how things worked out for this kid at Hyde.....for surely changing ones behavior from the outside can sometimes result in an iron exterior but with nothing more than a hollow and empty core .
