Parents, who realize that they may not be competent to handle their troubled teens by themselves, often seek professional help. Some children have learning disabilities, undeveloped social skills, or personality disorders that when left undiagnosed or untreated can lead to behavioral problems later in life.

Parenting teens is difficult enough as it is, but if the teen is struggling with emotional or psychological problems, then both the parents and children suffer more. A teenager’s problems reflect in their academic performance and overall behavior in school. Failing grades and isolation from peers are common signs of a troubled teenager. Parents can help reform their troubled teen by sending them to a military boarding school, a type of therapeutic boarding school.

Therapeutic boarding schools or emotional growth boarding schools help students deal with behavioral and emotional problems before they get worse. These students may also be suffering from substance abuse, alcohol abuse, or may be plagued with significant learning differences.

Unlike in a traditional school setting, therapeutic military boarding schools aim to provide a warm, safe atmosphere to help troubled teens get back on the right track. They have a compassionate educational community that helps develop personal growth and healthy self-expression to inspire academic excellence and teaching and encouraging individual responsibility.

However, this begs the question of how young a child could be for parents to send to a boarding school. It actually depends on the family, the child, and the particular boarding school concerned. A child will need to adjust to the new environment, and his ability to adjust will depend largely on his maturity, personality, and flexibility.

Parents should carefully consider any decision to send their child to a military boarding school or any other type of facility where they will live away from home and family. They should make a thorough assessment of the child’s strengths and weaknesses. They should also look into the factors that contribute to their problem teens’ behavior. The younger their teens are, the more important this process of assessment will be.

Some teens struggle with low or failing grades for many reasons. One reason could be their inability to cope well with their adolescence and with their environment. Their show of defiance or resentment towards authority may be a mask to hide their fears and insecurities.

However, most parents feel inadequate to handle their teenagers’ behavior problems. They feel hard-pressed in finding the root of their teenagers’ issues and concerns. These parents see military boarding schools as a way to with their problem teenagers who suffer from behavior disorders and substance abuse issues. Can military boarding schools really help troubled teens?

Military boarding school programs specifically target troubled teens that have problems with authority, exhibit anti-social and self-destructive behavior, and have substance abuse problems. The environment in a therapeutic boarding school, like a military school, is more structured and consistent. Unlike classrooms, where the teachers seem inadequate to deal with problem students, military boarding schools employ trained and licensed professionals, including the teachers, counselors, and the administrative staff.

The literature in behavior modification refers to military boarding schools as “emotional growth” schools. Extra-curricular activities, such as field trips and camping trips, promote and improve self-esteem and personal responsibility. Students actively participate in all activities, not only those found in the classroom, but with the whole community as well.

Student participation is strongly encouraged as it leads to affirmations and positive reinforcement about the value of their participating and about their value as people. This is exactly the kind of positive feelings that problem teenagers need to help rebuild their self-confidence, self-respect and sense of self-worth. The staff and teachers carefully supervise all activities to ensure order and maintain safety among students.

Military boarding schools and other therapeutic programs designed for troubled teens emphasize personal responsibility and the need to understand the natural consequences of their behaviors. Teens live in an environment where they can learn to recognize negative behavior and make better choices.

Teens who have attended therapeutic military boarding schools or similar programs have shown remarkable progress academically and improvements in their behavior and mental health in a relatively short period. After finishing the program or school, they return home with a more positive outlook on life. Since therapeutic boarding schools also work closely with the teens’ families, the parents also benefit from positive changes in behavior they show towards their children.

One of the signs of a troubled teen is alcohol abuse.

All loving parents want the best for their kids. They already had high hopes and big dreams for them when they were born. They want to see their kids grow up and mature and to reach their goals and become happy successful adults. However, the road of parenting teens does not always appear bright and sunny.

Not all parents have obedient or compliant teenagers in their homes. Despite their best efforts to instill in their children the good values that mold a strong character, some children just seem adamant to grow up in the wrong direction.

A defiant teen may be an angry son or a stubborn daughter who does not fit in well with their peers. Their inability to fit in and their feelings of incompetency prevent them from attaining self-realization, which is an important step in Maslow’s hierarchy of steps in personality development. Behavioral or emotional difficulties are sources for a teen’s troubles and these may result to personal problems, such as academic difficulties, substance abuse, depression, and even self-destructive behavior among other things.

Parents must first recognize that a problem exists before they can take steps to help their problem teenagers. When they realize that their home environment is not the best place to solve their teens’ problems, then parents can take the ultimate step by placing the care and welfare of their children in the hands of professionals trained to help problem teens. Parents may want to seek the help of a boarding school for their troubled boys and troubled girls.

The earlier that parents recognize the need for help, the better are their chances of actually reforming their problem teenagers. Parents can opt to send their problem teens to therapeutic boarding schools where they can avail of clinical inpatient services. These boarding schools help teens with emotional problems, such as severe anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, Asperger syndrome, or students with substance abuse, suicidal tendencies, and socialization problems.

Therapeutic boarding schools have counselors working closely with their students, using specialized educational tools and techniques designed to help each student’s specific needs. Therapists involved in therapeutic boarding schools work with family members on a regular basis when the child is at school, giving reports on how the child is progressing and at the same time interviewing the parents on how to better counsel the child. There are steps taken to ensure that even after the child leaves the school, improvements will continue.

Adolescence is the age of experimentation. Teens are naturally rebellious because they are testing the limits of what is normal and what is not. However, when their behavior shows a strong and frequent pattern of defiance and delinquency, it is time for the parents to face the truth that their teen may be on the wrong path of development.

During these times of conflicting fear, shame and guilt, the parents should seek professional help. Many professionals work in therapeutic boarding schools for troubled boys and troubled girls. They help these troubled teens reconcile their emotional and mental issues to become psychologically healthy adults. They also help them develop good social and communication skills, which they can use when they re-integrate into mainstream society.

Troubled teens most often blame their parents or have deep-seated feelings of anger that they themselves fail to comprehend or even pinpoint the source. Through therapy, they learn how to deal with their emotions and to reach for self-realization, which is the last step in Maslow’s hierarchy for personality development.

When troubled teens lean towards violent behavior, parents can choose to “incarcerate” them in military schools and boot camps for adolescents. If they have committed a crime while being a minor, then the state has the right to place them in a state-run juvenile delinquency facility, unless they consent to undergoing a shock incarceration program in a boot camp or military training school (based on the US Code).

However, the severity of military school training programs seem too harsh for some parents, who would rather send their kids to therapeutic boarding schools, a form of private residential treatment. Here are tips from the Federal Trade Commission when considering private residential treatment for your troubled teen:

• Check for a state-issued license or an accreditation from governing bodies.
• Contact the state Attorney General (www.naag.org), the Better Business Bureau (www.bbb.org), and the local consumer protection office (www.consumeraction.gov/state.shtml) where the program is located.
• Pay particular attention to any reports of unsanitary or unsafe living conditions, bad food, exposure to extreme environmental conditions or extreme physical activities, inadequate supervision, medical neglect, physical or sexual abuse, and any violation of youth or family right.
• Check whether the program provides an academic curriculum. Some schools only offer distance education or self-study.
• Check the credentials of the employees, including the clinical director, the staff, the educators, the counselors and the therapists. Ask if there is a doctor or nurse available to address the medical needs of the teenagers.
• Ask probing questions about the program, particularly on how they discipline their students and how they measure success in their treatments. As a parent of one of their students, you have the right to request for detailed reports about your child’s progress.

Parents should be particular when asking these questions from institutions that provide private residential treatment. The federal government does not regulate these types of programs, unlike military schools that qualify under the shock incarceration program. A 2007 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have found cases of abuse and neglect at these programs.

A troubled teen drinking

Whenever we think of parenting, we automatically associate it with something that only parents do to or for a child. In reality, it is something more complicated than that. How parents deal with their kids depends on not just the parents themselves, but also the children and the situation.

The different personalities of the parents and the teens affect the dynamics of the parent-teen relationship. To build productive family ties, both parents and teens must bridge their differences by changing the way they think and behave towards each other.

Parents often look at their teens and still see the toddlers they used to be. Teens look at their parents and see strangers who were there to control their lives. The feeling of being grown-up, and yet unable to express themselves as adults, can be frustrating to some teens.

Although parents can never be on the same level as their teen’s friends, they can become more than parents to them. Parents can become mentors as well as trusted confidantes to their kids. They are not there to judge or dictate, but to listen and understand what their children are going through.
Even when parents can be privy to their teens’ deepest, darkest secrets, they can still discipline their teens when they get out of line without resorting to emotional blackmail.

The fear that holds back a teen from becoming too close to their parents is the possibility that their thoughts, feelings and actions will be used against them and put them in a place where they lose their freedom to speak and to decide their own fate.

Parents also have the same fear, but not in the same manner as teens think. They fear losing hold of the child they had and see a stranger in their midst. This fear of losing their freedom to decide the best for their child and let the unknown forces influence their children keeps the parents from letting go and trusting their children to choose the right path.

In the case of emotionally troubled teens, the cause may not always be the parents and their ways of rearing their children. Perhaps, it is a simple twist of fate, such as a natural predilection towards violent anti-social behavior. Freud may think everything stems from the childhood, but in reality, the child itself decides its own fate and may lose its moral anchor because of social and cultural factors.