The great advantage to residential treatment is that you get an enormous amount of professional expertise concentrated in one place. While a robust team of diverse specialties is great for your child’s treatment, it can be confusing to know who does what. The following list will at least give you a sense of who’s who on the treatment team.
The key contribution parents can make when their child is in treatment is to provide understanding and support, even as they work through their own painful emotions. This is a challenge, of course, and means that parents must engage their own therapeutic work in order to be able to help their daughter.
With adolescent trauma victims and their families, therapist Brad Rentfro, LPC, is using new brain research to great effect. Since neural pathways can actually be re-routed, says Rentfro, PTSD patients can literally change how their brains process both old and new situations.
When an adolescent experiences symptoms of post-traumatic stress, it’s not unusual for her parents to feel confused and suspicious. That’s because it’s incredibly painful for a parent to know that their child has been so deeply wounded. In fact, it can be so difficult to process a child’s trauma that the parent may unwittingly minimize and deny—it’s just too much to take in.
While volunteering to help others may not seem like a sophisticated mental-health technique, those who engage in community service tend to weigh less, have fewer health problems, and report a higher measure of subjective happiness than those who don’t.
Rather than suddenly corralling the family for seven nights of regimented dining, though, ease into it if it’s not already a habit. One or two nights a week is a great start. Make it fun by cooking something everyone will like (or even ordering in) and try to make dinner time fit everyone’s schedule to the extent you can. This approach is more likely to leave your family wanting more, rather than less, of this healthy family habit.
This series of blogs is designed to serve as a reminder of some basic building blocks for emotional and behavioral health. These are not treatment modalities with fancy names or reams of clinical research. These are simple lifestyle choices that can help you and your family feel and function better.
“Trust fosters transparency,” says Jensen-Savoie, “and transparency is the most reliable and appropriate window into your into your young adult’s world.”
When a teen or young adult enters residential treatment, parents are often surprised to learn the extent to which their child’s confidentiality is protected by the clinical staff.
All of us have people we care about: mothers, fathers, children, extended family and close friends. We want the best for them and we don’t want them to feel pain or endure hardship. So when does caring for someone become caretaking? Here are a few differences to help you distinguish between the two. When a [...]
Staff should be trained to distinguish between behaviors that stem from oppositional tendencies and those that stem from neurobiological disorders. Many young people with spectrum disorders have been chronically misunderstood by parents, teachers, and even therapists; in these cases, behaviors resulting from rigid thinking or misinterpretation of visual cues may meet with consequences instead of coaching.
It’s true of nearly everything—gifts, massages, meals, hugs, praise—that the better you are at receiving the better you’ll be at giving. It’s true of gratitude as well. If you find yourself deflecting other people’s efforts to thank you with a dismissive wave of the hand, a falsely humble headshake, or a blocking phrase like “not at all,” or “it was nothing,” then knock it off! For everyone to benefit maximally from an act of thanksgiving, that act must be accepted. If someone lobs a sincere “thanks” your way, do them—and yourself—a favor: look them in the eye, smile, and say, “you’re welcome.” Enjoy it! That’s what gratitude is all about, after all—giving, receiving, and enjoying.
“You can’t separate physical and emotional well being,” says Corey Hickman, CTRS, a residential life director for InnerChange. Because of this, his team of recreation specialists engineers their recreation program to be more than just fun and games. They consider recreation to be a critical treatment modality, equally as important as talk therapy and other treatment approaches for addressing adolescent emotional problems.
While it’s normal to test lying as a coping and management strategy, parental consequences can help drive home the point that normal doesn’t mean effective. A calm, non-reactive approach to constructing and implementing consequences for lying can help save your teen from a much tougher set of consequences at work or in other important relationships as an adult.
If you’re already relationally in the red with your teen or an oppositional disorder is emerging, opportunities to make deposits will be scarce. In this situation your teen is likely to be guarded and unreceptive. Hinman suggests that this situation might make it necessary to engage outside help. This help might be a therapist, a member of the clergy, or a favorite aunt or uncle.
Many teenagers in treatment are being diagnosed with a disorder once associated primarily with soldiers returning from war. Post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is now known to affect not only soldiers, but anyone who has a strong, but unaddressed, emotional reaction to a highly disruptive situation. If you believe your teenage daughter may be struggling with a past trauma, the following may help you offer informed, compassionate support as she heals.
A huge part of every parents’ job when their child is in treatment is to prepare for their return home. You’re a better parent (and employee, and friend, and everything) when you’re taking good care of yourself, so self-care is a critical part of that preparation. Sleep is at the core of self care; so now’s a great time to practice good sleep habits. Here are a few tips to help you take care of your main nighttime parenting responsibility: sleeping!
According to Dr. Kelly McGongal, a health psychologist and Stanford University instructor, self control isn’t something you either have or don’t have. It’s a strength that can be developed over time; like a muscle, your self control can be exercised to make it stronger. She also reminds us that lapses are normal and should be treated as such; normalizing these failings can help them have less power to discourage us…less power to push us deeper into victimhood.
For several years I have been giving presentations on how brain development and the process of learning can help us understand and improve therapy in residential care. I have been able to apply the principles of learning and memory in areas of parenting and bringing about positive change in people’s lives. When I was recently asked [...]
Following is part 1 in a 3 part series about using video calls in family therapy: Robert Zemeckis painted a picture of 2015 in Back to the Future 2, with flying cars, hoverboards, automated houses and video calls. While I’m still waiting to ride a hoverboard, the technology of video calling is readily available for [...]
The great advantage to residential treatment is that you get an enormous amount of professional expertise concentrated in one place. While a robust team of diverse specialties is great for your child’s treatment, it can be confusing to know who does what. The following list will at least give you a sense of who’s who on the treatment team.
The key contribution parents can make when their child is in treatment is to provide understanding and support, even as they work through their own painful emotions. This is a challenge, of course, and means that parents must engage their own therapeutic work in order to be able to help their daughter.
With adolescent trauma victims and their families, therapist Brad Rentfro, LPC, is using new brain research to great effect. Since neural pathways can actually be re-routed, says Rentfro, PTSD patients can literally change how their brains process both old and new situations.
New Haven has earned The Joint Commission's Gold Seal of Approval
