Parenting Newsletter Aspen Education Group

In this issue:
Spending the Holidays at a Therapeutic Boarding School or Residential Treatment Center for Teens

Eating Disorders and Your Kids: What to Watch Out For

Five Things You Can Do to Support Your Teens' Successful Recovery

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Call (866) 845-1391 to learn more about Aspen's programs for children, teens, and young adults.

Aspen Ranch is a licensed residential treatment center located in Loa, Utah. The Ranch's nationally renowned equine therapy program is just one part of an intensive therapeutic milieu that facilitates positive change in troubled teens. The strong work ethic inherent on the Ranch is fundamental to cultivating the characteristics of responsibility, discipline, respect and teamwork.

Turn-About Ranch is a place where old-time values such as hard work, honesty, respect, teamwork and accountability are the standard. Teens thrive in the unique environment of this spirited working cow-and-horse ranch. The objective of Turn-About Ranch is to provide a hard-hitting, high-impact therapeutic program that will remold and turn around the lives of rebellious teens.

Winter is a great time to enroll your teen in a wilderness program!

Adirondack Leadership Expeditions is a character development wilderness program that promotes personal growth through focused experiences. The forested, mountain setting removes urban distractions to allow students room to gain insight into their core values and accept responsibility for their choices.

Phoenix Outdoor is a licensed wilderness-based substance abuse and chemical dependency treatment program for teenagers ages 13-17.

SUWS of the Carolinas is a therapeutic wilderness program that uses the outdoors as an alternative to conventional treatment environments, while engaging students using traditional therapeutic methods.

Spending the Holidays at a Therapeutic Boarding School or Residential Treatment Center for Teens

When families send their troubled teens to a therapeutic boarding school or residential treatment center during the holiday season, parents feel a lot of guilt and teens feel a lot of anger. But for the sake of teens' safety and a peaceful, enjoyable holiday for the rest of the family, spending one winter away from home is often the best way to ensure that future holidays are full of joy and cheer for all.

Keeping Teens Safe

"The most important thing is the teens are safe," said Brandon Burr, LCSW, the clinical director at Aspen Ranch, an adolescent residential treatment center in Utah. "They won't be ruining the family's Christmas, getting drunk on New Year's Eve or getting in trouble with the law."

Aspen Ranch Student

Even though it is common for teens to make promises that this year will be different, and parents try year after year to get through the holidays before enrolling their child in a therapeutic program, most teens don't change their behavior just because it's a special occasion.

"Danger exists year-round, whether it's a birthday, New Year's Eve, Christmas day, Hanukkah or any other day," said Marty Ormond, a program director at Turn-About Ranch, a residential treatment center for teens on a working horse and cattle ranch in southern Utah. "No matter what time of year it is, if a child is engaging in risky behaviors, every moment parents wait is another moment something bad could happen."

Being away from home around the holidays can be the positive wake-up call some teens need to make changes in their lives. Therapeutic boarding schools and residential treatment centers give adolescents the opportunity to step back and re-evaluate their decisions, learn new skills and rebuild family relationships.

Learn more about the benefits of being in a structured school environment during the holidays >>

Eating Disorders and Your Kids: What to Watch Out For

There are a variety of social pressures that make kids, particularly teenagers, feel self-conscious about their bodies: peers, movies, magazine covers, just to name a few. All too often, the feelings of being self-conscious and insecure about their bodies lead many kids to develop eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia and binge eating disorder. Statistics show that kids are most likely to develop an eating disorder between the ages of 11 and 13.

Many adults erroneously believe that eating disorders are not something to be overly concerned about. The reality is that eating disorders interfere with normal daily life, cause extreme weight fluctuations, and can cause damage to vital organs and bodily functions. Eating disorders ultimately lead to physical and emotional damage, and if they are not caught early on, the potential for severe damage to occur increases dramatically.

Continue reading to learn about the warning signs that can alert you to the presence of an eating disorder in your child >>

Five Things You Can Do to Support Your Teens' Successful Recovery

Whether your teens are in treatment for substance abuse, eating disorders, video game addictions, depression or behavioral issues, your participation is going to be important to their full recovery.

Participating means more than just finding an appropriate adolescent treatment center that can help your teens address their issues. It means taking an active role in helping your teens make needed changes, and offering them the support they will inevitably need when they return home from a treatment center, boarding school or wilderness therapy program.

"For kids to be successful at home, parents need to make changes themselves," said Jason Drake, LCSW, a clinical program manager at Island View residential treatment center for adolescents in Syracuse, Utah. "Both the parents and the kids need to be invested."

Without family involvement, teens are likely to return to their old patterns and behaviors once they return home. Getting involved with your teens' experience can help reinforce their new positive behaviors, teach you new ways to communicate with them and help the entire family work on ways to support each other once your teens return home.

Read all five tips here >>

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