Successful Transition from a Therapeutic Boarding School

Sharon Hartunian, LICSW, CADAC, LADC 1
Director of Counseling Services

The transition for your adolescent from a therapeutic boarding school to home or a more traditional school setting can be exhilarating but also anxiety-ridden. There can be a sense or uncertainty about how well your child will adjust to the change. Planning for the transition, however, in a number of key areas, will help to ensure that you have prepared a supportive structure for you and your child. The three keys to success are planning the transition thoughtfully, remaining open to guidelines around communication and control, and maintaining self-care.

Planning:

Start working early with your child’s counselor to begin building transition supports in your community or the new school community in order to ensure a continuity of care. These supports can include individual counseling support, family therapy support, and psychiatric follow-up for medications, if appropriate.
Group therapy support can also be helpful for your teen. Local counseling centers, private clinicians, and schools can provide group counseling options. In addition, for teens struggling or in recovery from substance abuse, www.teengetgoing.com is an excellent resource for online group support facilitated by licensed clinicians.
Solidify activities and lessons for your child prior to your child’s return, according to their particular talents and interests. If your plan is for your child to move on to a traditional boarding school, check with the school as to the activities and lessons available for your child.
Arrange for continuing community supports that could include a self-help network, such as NA, AA, or Al-Anon; and/or community service opportunities.
With the self-help programs, check on the internet for local meetings and research meetings focused for young people. On scheduled home visits, help your child begin the connection to these services and opportunities, so that there will be a built-in familiarity with these supports.
Over the course of your child’s therapeutic program, facilitate graduated visits that build on successive, meaningful experiences with your child. The goal is successful family integration, which means that you have the opportunity to build toward success through a series of family visits and exercises in which you can spend time together, experience what is working and what is not, and then have time to process and assess the experience with your child’s counselor. With each visit, plans and expectations can be adapted and shaped, so that by the time of transition, you will have built a level of trust in your abilities to be together in positive and meaningful ways.
Practice with your child’s counselor on how to set expectations and limits, as well as how to support your child’s strengths. Family meetings and conference calls, including you, your child and counselor, will help you feel more empowered to continue an effective parenting role when your child leaves the program.
At least six weeks prior to your child’s departure from the therapeutic program, arrange for a family meeting with the counselor specifically focused on clarifying the transition plans and parental expectations. In this process, listen and incorporate, as appropriate, the requests of your child, so that the transition plan is sensitive to their input and the growth they have achieved.
Most importantly, do not prematurely pull your child from a therapeutic boarding school program in response to you and your child experiencing some initial, early successes and changes. The maintenance and integration of these changes is a longer process. Support the therapeutic recommendations of the program in terms of length of stay, so that there will be closure and completion in the areas of academics and social/emotional growth.

Communication and Control:

Once your child has departed from a therapeutic school environment, consider the following guidelines:

Always keep lines of communication open, no matter what.
Minimize using the word “should” from your conversations.
Avoid lectures or sermons; three minute sound bites can be more effective.
It is important that teens vent their feelings, even when they may be negative. Negative feelings are authentic. Set limits on being disrespectful but always be willing to listen to what may be upsetting to your teen.
Be available to talk whenever your teen wants to talk to you. Try not to lose that window of opportunity.
Negotiate as much as possible, taking into consideration the situation and age of your teen. Negotiating will fail, however, if you are over-controlling.
Most importantly, listen, even when things are hard to hear.
Keep the rules simple and consistent, but always be open to flexibility, creativity, and adaptation.
Avoid power struggles, especially around school work. Learn when to fight and when to let go. Try not to “lock heads.” It is always okay to take a break from an issue and return to it when everyone is in a less-heated mood.
You cannot control, but you can influence, guide, and impart your values.
Choose your battles, as you cannot fight on all fronts.
Opposition is important in building autonomy.
Don’t let legitimate concerns come across as being paranoid, overly anxious, or overly involved. Teens are highly tuned to this condition. You do need to be available for your teen, but you do not want to be, “in their face.”
Do not involve your child in your couple conflicts. Work couple issues out on an adult level, without your child, and then present a united front, as much as possible, in terms of parenting, even if it means stuffing negative, unresolved feelings about your spouse or former spouse. Seek support from counseling, if these personal conflicts are spilling over into your relationship with your child.

Self-Care:

It is not just about your teens, it is also about you maintaining self-care by securing the support and help that will enable you to be a better and healthier parent.

Get the help that you need for any medical, emotional, or mental health struggles. You do the most for your child by taking care of yourself. If appropriate, seek assessment, counseling and medication that can be just as helpful for you as it has been for your child.
Do not take your child’s mistakes personally. Their mistakes are not your mistakes.
Stay in communication with other parents. Get involved or start your own parent support group in your community. A great resource to start a self-facilitated parent discussion group is www.PleaseStoptheRollercoaster.com
As much as they protest and want to be with their friends, teens also want time with you. Plan the time and take the time to be together in fun, interesting, and relaxing activities. The time taken will be good for you and your child. Though teens may seem indifferent, they still need you.
Do not allow verbal abuse.
Check your expectations. Your children are their own beings and are not extensions of you.
Constantly rescuing your child can be enabling and can delay growing up. It is also exhausting for you. Experimentation is natural and is not always risky behavior. Allow, appropriately, for your children to fly on their own, even if they fall at times. In this way, you will be supporting their growth toward maturity and independence.