We sent our son to a Teen Wilderness Therapy Program last year and I was reading through my journal. Looking back realizing our family was in great turmoil, the guilt, the shame, lack of sleep, loss of work, wondering how your teen is doing, and the never ending pain in your heart that comes with the reality that I was unable to parent my child through his teen years.
On day three of wilderness, June 10, 2007 I wrote this metaphor –
I hear you in the water screaming “Mommy, mommy come help me”. I watch as your arms flail up and down you’re gasping for air. I reach out, I reach further trying to help. You grab my hand, then you slip away and then you are back. We try again, but I realized the more I try to save you the further down you go. I cannot do this alone, to save you I must get help.
My son was slipping further and further away from us, the more we tried to help, the more he resented us. It was the realization that our home, our community, our family was toxic and not a safe place for him to exist. It was time for an intervention and Wilderness Therapy was our answer for help. We had no idea what would come next, we knew what we were currently doing was not working. The drugs, overwhelming while we tried everything to keep him home (we fought sending him away), from changing schools, therapy 3-4x per week, AA meetings, we were running around like chickens with our heads cut off. The drug urine tests became a joke, all the kids know how to get around them and then he started using over the counter drugs because they don’t show up in the urine tests and that can be worse than the illegal drugs.
We sent him to a Clinical Wilderness Therapy Program for struggling teens (Second Nature). An educational consultant chose the program and the therapist that would be appropriate. We did not use an escort service, my husband flew him there after his fourth visit to the psychiatric ward in four months.
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I know this is old — but what finally happened?