Maia Szalavitz - Help at any cost

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

For my father, Miklos Szalavitz, whom I miss terribly, and for "troubled teens, who need to be heard, not harmed

What we do to our children, they will do to society.

PLINY THE ELDER

Introduction

A dolescence strikes fear in the hearts of even the best parents and raising a teenager, even in ideal circumstances, involves many conflicts and constant worry. But what should you do if your son becomes so out-of-control, so defiant, so irresponsible and impulsive that you know hes not just a typical rebellious teen? What can you do if your daughter refuses to just say no, runs away, risks pregnancy? Where should you turn when the archetypal troubled teen is your child?

Over the last four decades, a multibillion-dollar industry 1 has arisen that claims to answer these questions and promises peace to parents who send their children to residential facilities for tough love. These behavior modification programs offer hope to parents who have become desperate, who feel the need for drastic solutions, who have lost faith in the mental health system and perhaps in their own ability to provide effective discipline. For parents whose teens are not yet in deep trouble, the programs claim preventive powerswhich amounts to promising an all

H EJL P AT ANY COST

purpose answer for any type of adolescent difficulty from depression or minor drug use to out-of-control aggression and defiance. With draconian discipline, they promise to whip difficult kids into shape.

Andrea Bradbury* was one obvious candidate for a tough love program. Her parents, a Florida postal worker and a school lunchroom manager, grew increasingly frustrated by their adopted daughters mood swings and disobedient behavior, which intensified during her teen years. Her apparent promiscuity was troublingespecially when she began running away from home to be with her various boyfriends. The Bradburys spent many late nights waiting for word about her whereabouts, desperately wanting the phone to ring but also frightened about what news it might bring. They suspected, too, that Andreas problems were negatively affecting her younger brother, Richard. Andrea just wouldnt follow the rules, wouldnt listen, and wouldnt respond to discipline. Why wasnt their daughter getting the message? What would it take to get through to her?

Bob and Sally Bacon were also deeply concerned about their sixteen-year-old son, Aaron. Bob, an architect, and Sally, who worked various jobs, lived in an upscale neighborhood in Phoenix. Aaron had been a brilliant student and was a popular boy with a sunny personality. But when he hit his sophomore year of high school, his disposition turned darker. His grades sank. He became sullen, taciturn, and dishonest. The Bacons tried family therapy, but nothing seemed to reach him. Bob and Sally had always believed in explaining their values, in talking things out, reasoning everything through. But they worried they had been too soft. Did Aaron need them to put their foot down?

The problem of difficult, misbehaving teens is one that affects all kinds of families. No matter how ignorant or educated a parent you are, when its your child at risk, when your beloved baby has grown into someone you desperately want to protect but can no longer understand,

throughout this book, an asterisk at first mention of a name indicates that the persons real name is not used.

INTRODUCTION

you can become vulnerable to someone who offers answers, especially answers that dont imply mental illness, since there is still such tremendous stigma attached to psychiatric disorders. And adding to parents quite understandable reluctance to expose themselves to judgment and shame is the fact that treatments for mental and behavioral problems are underfunded, misunderstood, and underresearched. Consequently, its difficult even to know what type of help to seek, more challenging to find providers who utilize the best practices if you do manage to learn about them, and difficult to afford help if quality treatment can be located.

This is where tough love programs come in. Their main message is this: Todays teens are so out-of-control and so morally compromised that only extremely harsh, perhaps even brutal tactics can keep them in line. A bit of cruelty is necessary, even kindsignifying good parenting, the opposite of abuse. Whether you have been a lenient parent or a strict one doesnt matter, its not your fault: even the best parenting can be overcome by outside pressures. Awash in Americas cultural morass, parents have become too swamped to discipline effectively. And the answer, according to tough love proponents, is that troubled children need to be removed from this toxic environment, isolated, infantilized, and re-parented, returned only when they are fully prepared to comply with family rules. To prevent backsliding after treatment, parents are instructed on how to lay down and enforce the law, to make family membership itself contingent on total cooperation.

Tough love residential programs guarantee resultsto turn rebellion into happy obedience, defiance into self-disciplineto parents who take their advice. They offer parental absolution: its the child, inevitably influenced by a decadent and invasive culture, who is at fault, the child who must be sent off to be treated, although, of course, the parents must participate fully in the solution.

Parents who choose such treatment are rarely aware that theres no scientific evidence that favors it, nor do they tend to know about its troubled history marked by abuse and family disruption. They are also unlikely to be informed about how tough love programs almost invariably exaggerate the risks troubled teens face and inflate the severity of

HELP AT ANY COST

their childrens particular problems in order to make the sale. They rarely even know, in fact, just who benefits from referring them to a particular program. In this industry, many programs quietly pay satisfied parents and seemingly objective educational consultants for recommendations, online endorsements, and enrollments.

And because of the shame that surrounds seeking help for teen behavioral problems, parents often dont activate the social networks that they would normally use to seek the best care if, for example, a child had cancer. Worse, the media has been complicit in keeping them in the dark. It has accepted programs unsubstantiated claims of widespread success as evidence for efficacy instead of demanding scientific proof. Consequently, for the past four decades, the troubled-teen industry, pushing the philosophy of tough love, has profited from parental shame, media complacency, and government antidrug hyperbole, exploiting families desperation, fear, and ignorance.