Sending your child away
When parents feel overwhelmed in dealing with a problem adolescent, a costly boarding program may seem like the only way out. Making such a decision can be scary and humbling.
This past summer, a couple in Northern California paid two imposing men to come into their home at 4 in the morning, handcuff their 17-year-old daughter and force her into a car headed for the airport. After months of threats, the parents had enrolled her in what's called a therapeutic wilderness program, where she would hike three to five miles a day with a 25-pound pack, learn to make a fire with two sticks and theoretically transform from a manipulative teenager who cursed out her mom and dad and had started failing in school back into a young woman they could live with. Six months later, the daughter still has nightmares about being taken from her bed in the middle of the night, but when recounting the story over the phone, her mother calmly said, "I would do it all over again in a heartbeat."
Parents in the South Bay relayed a similar story. They had found a large handful of unprescribed Xanax on their 16-year-old son's dresser, and suddenly the moody behavior and the days spent locked in his room started to make sense. Their son didn't want to go to rehab, he didn't believe it would work and he didn't want his parents to spend the money. He talked about running away to Portland, Ore. And so they too hired a transport service -- the son referred to them as "the big, scary men" -- and after the parents woke up their son (also at 4 in the morning) and told him that they loved him and that they were doing what they thought was best, they watched him pull out of the driveway in a car driven by strangers, the son's middle finger raised in the air.
There are times -- emotionally exhausting and agonizing times -- when parents realize that something in the family system has gone horribly awry and that for a kid's safety and future, the son or daughter is better off living somewhere else. It is a terrible decision to have to make -- one that is scary, expensive and humbling. So what makes a parent do it?
http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-parentology14-2009nov14,0,3412672.story