Troubled teen schools must provide more than just school
Troubled teen schools exist as an aid to parents when teenage stress and anger begins to run out of control. Within troubled teen schools, more than just an academic recovery program is needed to get inappropriate behavior under control. When anger and stress become unbridled, often parents run out of resources to deal with them and are often reluctant to ask for help. Most importantly, parents need to know that help is there, and that asking for it is the right thing to do. In addition to academic recovery in troubled teen schools, troubled teens also need professional therapy and counseling to identify and control stress and anger triggers, and methods for instilling emotional control, self-reliance, and responsibility.
Troubled Teen Schools help keep education on track
Most of those involved in the criminal justice system will tell you that the number one crime fighter is education. Statistically, this is borne out in recidivism statistics. To put it another way, the greatest contributor to criminal behavior later in life is the lack of education at the high school level.
Arivaca Boys Ranch has a fully-accredited high school curriculum modeled to help young men recover lost credits, get their education back on track, and continue the progress toward a high school diploma and a better life. Part of that model is enhancement of one-on-one instruction. One-on-one instruction allows students to overcome the gaps in understanding that keep them from progressing to higher levels. These gaps form around the anger and stress, the isolation, and the feelings of inadequacy resident in the angry teenager's personality. However, education provides more than just learning from books. Educational achievement also provides the building of self-confidence and self-esteem for having passed these important milestones.
Psychological therapy and counseling to restore integrity
One aspect of troubled teen schools such as Arivaca Boys Ranch is that part of the program involves psychological counseling and therapy. Trained and licensed clinical therapists are on staff for that purpose. In addition, our entire staff is schooled on appropriate responses to re-training those with inappropriate emotional responses to help defuse those behaviors. Such conditions such as ODD, troubled teens with RAD, and ADHD can be identified, differentiated, and treated.
Building control and responsibility through Equine Therapy
At Arivaca Boys Ranch, one of the most effective tools we have encountered in dealing with emotional control and responsibility training has been equine therapy. Equine therapy provides a peculiar set of experiences beneficial to troubled teens. Each boy soon learns that emotional outbursts and yelling get them nowhere (positive) with the horses. Second, in training the horses, equine therapy puts boys in a role similar to parenting and they soon begin to identify with what it looks like to be on that side of the conflict. Each boy is responsible for the care and training of his horse. Arivaca Boys Ranch is a working horse ranch and that means there are true duties and responsibilities. Each boy learns a new appreciation for attention to detail and follow-through.
Getting school and other basics back together
Restoring education, getting stress and anger under control, and building self-esteem and reliability are three basic foundations to getting your teenage son back again and on the right track. Parents need to realize that, in some circumstances, just being a good and loving parent is not enough. Troubled teen schools exist to handle the special problems that out-of-control stress and anger causes to the dissolution of the family. Parents, however, are an integral part of overall therapy and Arivaca Boys Ranch maintains active parent programs to include them in the learning process. |
