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Cleaning the Slate: Teens Build New Relationships at Home While Away at School

When parents send their struggling teens to a therapeutic boarding school or residential treatment center, their greatest hope is for change - a change in attitude, in expectations for the future, and in their interpersonal relationships. As they invest in their child's mental and emotional health and academic progress, parents count down the days until their child can return home and the family can begin anew.

At the same time the students are digging to the root of their core issues and working to get back on track in school, parents are asked to do some self-exploration of their own. According to some experts, family involvement can make the difference between a successful therapeutic experience and a mediocre one. At Aspen Ranch, a licensed residential treatment center for adolescents ages 13 to 17 in rural Utah, parents are supported and welcomed members of their child's therapeutic team.

Restoring Peace to the Family Unit

While academics, individual and group therapy sessions, experiential learning trips, and equine therapy create the foundation for success at Aspen Ranch, the family therapy component is one of the most critical for the child and family's long-term success. Because most of the ranch's students return home after attending the program, restoring function to the family unit is a top priority.

"Throughout an adolescent's stay with us, we are recommending resources and therapeutic services for parents to be working on," says Stacy Collins, a therapist at Aspen Ranch who has worked with at-risk youth for more than seven years. "Personal growth is essential for everyone involved, or the child will come back to the same environment - and the same negative behaviors - they left behind."

Carrie Mitchell, parent coordinator at Aspen Ranch, works closely with parents during the first three weeks after a child begins the program. Her role is to serve as a resource for parents and a person families can call with questions and get an immediate response.

"The decision to send a child to a residential treatment center is one of the most difficult parents have to make," says Mitchell. "Families are often in a place of crisis. They are entrusting us with the care and education of their child, and we take that responsibility as seriously as they do."

Mitchell oversees the ranch's comprehensive parent education program, which includes seminars, workshops, parent weeks, and intensive family therapy, in addition to weekly updates from each child's therapist. Within the first two months of school, parents are invited to attend a two-hour Web-based seminar about what to expect throughout the program. The seminar is an opportunity for parents to ask questions and learn more about their child's experience.

Celebrating Parent Week at the Ranch

At Aspen Ranch, parents are also welcome to attend parent week, which is offered multiple times a year to all parents with a student enrolled at the ranch for eight weeks or longer. Under the guidance of master's and doctoral level therapists, parents learn about the disease of addiction, self-harm, relational aggression, adoption issues, and other key trouble areas, and can speak with the therapists specifically about their child. At the end of parent week, the students join their families for a large, celebratory banquet.

On two occasions throughout the year, parent week is experiential in nature and is offered to parents of children who have "earned their saddle" by reaching a certain level of responsibility and trustworthiness in the school's level system. In addition to instructional seminars and parenting skills sessions, parents can experience the activities their child participates in every week at the ranch, including team-building initiatives on the high and low ropes course, a trail ride on horseback, and repelling.

"Experiential parent weeks are an exciting time of role reversal and personal development," says Mitchell. "By this point in the program, the students have become equine experts and have learned new skills their parents don't have. It can be empowering and confidence-building for both parents and kids to see how far they've come. It also takes parents outside their comfort zone so they can relate to their child's experience and learn and grow as part of their own healing process."

Intensive Family Workshops

Students spend at least nine months attending school, working with horses, and meeting with their therapist at the ranch, but often the most profound breakthroughs occur when the family reunites with their child during the intensive family workshop. At least once a month, the staff hosts a two-day family intervention for five families at a time. At a location away from the ranch, a specialized facilitator gets each family comfortable in a therapeutic environment sharing with other families. The parents speak on the first day without interruption from the students, and the students speak on the second day.

Each party discusses lists they've created of things they appreciate and don't appreciate about one another, and engage in a "clean the slate" process of telling their truths, taking accountability for the things they've done wrong, and letting go of past hurts and resentments.

"The cleaning the slate experience can be challenging for parents because the kids often have extensive lists of things they've done that their parents don't know about," notes Mitchell. "Full disclosure can be immensely therapeutic, but it can be hard for parents to hear."

At the end of the two-day intervention, the families participate in a closing session, where they talk about where they'd like the relationship to go and what their expectations are for the future.

"The intensive family workshops have been extremely powerful for families," says Collins. "To be able to say what they need to say and hear feedback from the group can put their experiences into perspective and give them new ideas for how to approach their relationships."

"The family workshop is hands down the most effective tool we have at the ranch," adds therapist Matthew Pettit. "Spending roughly 30 hours doing face-to-face family group therapy can be extremely intense and emotional. We've had kids who made slow progress go through an intervention and make a 180-degree turnaround."

Going to Great Lengths for Great Change

Sending a child to boarding school or residential treatment can be gut-wrenching for some parents, says Collins. But choosing a high-quality, reputable program that prioritizes family involvement and offers a wide range of resources to support each student's family members will ensure that the entire family receives the best treatment possible.

"I commend these parents, and do everything I can to hold their hands when they get weak, because these are the people who care the most," says Collins. "Not only with words but with actions, they show they are willing to go to any length to help their child."