An aspect of a school for troubled teens which surprises some parents is how the program works to help teens find independence. But as teens struggle with depression, substance abuse, or other issues, it makes sense to help teens learn how to become independent and overcome these life roadblocks.

Importance Of Independence For Teens

While many troubled teens seem to be too independent, the kind of acting out which characterizes troubled teens is really just another form of dependence.

Consider this—say a teen is defying their parents to stay out late and party with friends, sometimes engaging in underage drinking and drug abuse. Some may call that being independent, but if you examine the root of why the teen is acting that way, dependence is one of the key issues, as the teen depends on their friends' acceptance and the uses of illegal substances to feel better.

Breaking those chains of dependence and developing healthy independence takes the coordination of a healthy environment where the teen can grow and a program designed to assist teens in reaching the right track, which is where a school for troubled teens come in.

How Schools For Troubled Teen Promote Independence

For teens who attend an all-boys boarding school like Liahona Treatment Center, changes and healthy independence can be worked toward thanks to various program emphasizes.

• Personal development focus - While many adults eventually learn how to set and reach personal development goals, this can be a hard skill for teens to acquire, especially if they have already fallen into bad habits. While attending a school for troubled teens, personal development is a focal point, and teens learn how to set and achieve personal goals.
• Learn necessary life skills - Troubled teens often miss out on necessary life skills ranging from proper hygiene to socializing soft skills needed for jobs and interpersonal interactions. At a school for troubled teens, these skills can be learned and practiced.
• Improve academics - Having low grades can hold teens back from many opportunities, leaving them dependent on parents and low-skills jobs. To help troubled teens reach a more independent future, they can work with licensed teachers and tutor to improve their grades and rejoin their peers academically.
• Therapy-guided growth - To help make permanent changes, therapy is needed to assist troubled teens in overcoming their struggles. By working one-on-one with a therapist, as well as daily group therapy and weekly family therapy sessions, teens can make real, permanent changes in their lives by identifying the root of their struggles and developing appropriate coping tools.

At Liahona Treatment Center, we have helped countless troubled teenage boys learn how to become independent and happy young men who are ready to meet the challenges that life throws at them. If you would like to see if our program could help your son, contact us. One of our program advisors will be happy to talk with you and determine if Liahona is the right for your troubled son’s needs.

A certain amount of curiosity and interest in sex is to be expected from teenagers. With all the hormones coursing through their bodies and their brains still developing, it is not surprising that some troubled teens go astray and fall into deviant sexual activity, no matter what your family rules dictate.

What Drives Teens To Become Sexually Active

While research has shown that the rates of teens engaging in adult activities like sex, alcohol consumption, and other things have seen a marked decrease, there are still many teens who engage in sexual activity. What many parents struggle to understand is why.

There are a variety of common reasons for your teen's sexual activity.

• Sexual curiosity - The hormones surging through your teen’s body plays a part in greatly heightening your teen’s natural curiosity and interest in sex. Parents who prefer to keep their teens in the dark about sex often find their teens go out to satisfy that curiosity firsthand, but without the tools to keep themselves safe. This fact, in part, is why it is so important for parents to take the lead in teaching sex ed to their children.
• Pressure from partner - Teens with a boyfriend or girlfriend may undergo a good deal of pressure to have sex or be physically intimate in other ways. Their desire to be accepted can lead many young couples to engage in sexual activity before they are ready.
• Peer pressure - Both teenage boys and girls can experience pressure to engage in sexual activity from their peers. This pressure can be fueled by a desire to seem older and more experienced. Or even a more simple need to keep up with the rest of the kids at school.
• Defiance of rules - In an act of defiance, some teens choose to engage in sexual activity. Parents highly restrictive rules, such as no dating until 18 or who insist on monitoring their teens at all times often find their teens sneak around their rules in an attempt to exert their growing need for independence.

In some more extreme cases, sexual deviance may be triggered in teens due to sexual abuse, whether by a partner or when they were children. In these cases, it is vital that the teen receives therapeutic intervention to help them overcome the trauma. But first, you have to identify whether or not your teen is sexually active before you know how to intervene.

Signs That Your Teen Has Become Sexually Active

If you are concerned that your teen has begun engaging in risky sexual activity, there are signs you can look out for as you watch your teen. Should your teen display several of these signs, you can be fairly certain that they are sexually active.

• Tracks your activities - Teens who are sneaking around engaging in sex will often want to know your schedule better than you know it. That way, they don’t run the risk of you catching them in the act.
• Increased secretiveness - Around the teenage years, it is natural for teens to be less open with their parents and a little more withdrawn. However, if your teen shows a marked increase in secretiveness, such as guarding their devices and hiding their bag, you should be concerned.
• Appearance alteration - Finding their style is a common pursuit among teens. However, teens engaging in sexual activity may become more appearance driven, buying more provocative clothes and spending hours on exercise as well as strict dieting.
• Rapid mood swings - The rush of dopamine released by sexual activity can have a profound effect on the mood of teenagers. Teens engaging in illicit sexual activity are often subject to rapid mood swings, experiencing elation and deep depression as well as irritability in turns.
• Plummeting grades - Teens often allow their other interests and responsibilities like their schoolwork to fall by the wayside while pursuing sexual activity. If your teen normally has been able to maintain good grades, but they have recently slipped, this can be a sign your teen’s attention is elsewhere.
• Obtaining birth control - A pretty clear sign of sexual activity is if you find birth control such as contraception pills, condoms, or other forms of birth control in your teen’s possession.

Often, when parents learn that their teens are sexually active, they try to set stronger rules, have conversations about the responsibility of sex, and reinforce beliefs which may censure sex outside of marriage. However, this may not be enough to stop a sexually deviant youth.

How Residential Treatment Centers Help Sexually Deviant Teens

After you have tried all you could, from grounding to interventions with school counselors and therapists and your teen is still engaging in sexual activity, you may want to consider sending your troubled teen to a residential treatment center.

Some of the key ways a residential treatment center helps sexually active teens change are by:

• Building teens’ self-esteem - Many overly sexual teens struggle with feelings of worthlessness, which leads them to fill the void with sexual attention. At a residential treatment center, teens learn new skills, build confidence through new challenges, and opportunities to provide service to others.
• Having teens work with therapists - Sexually deviant teens don’t just happen. To reach the root of their issues and help them change, certified mental health professionals work with teens at a residential treatment center.
• Teaching teens new coping skills - Some teens use sex as a coping method to help them from feeling lonely, unappreciated, and other negative emotions. When in residential treatment, teens learn new ways to cope with the feelings which used to drive them to engage in sex.
• Helping teens repair academics - As the teens recover from their sexual deviance, a residential treatment center helps the teens' course correct in other aspects of their lives, such as their academics. With the help of state-licensed teachers, teens can enjoy academic recovery.

Liahona Treatment Center is here to help your troubled teen boy back onto the right path. With the help of our expert therapists, teachers, and staff, we work with teenage boys and assist them in rooting out the source of their problems while repairing negative coping methods. To see if our program is right for your teenage troubled son, contact us today.

Sending a rebellious teenager to a youth boot camp has a strong allure for frustrated parents everywhere. The military-style discipline promoted by these camps can make these parents believe that firm guidance is all their teens need to make the right choices. However, there are 4 main reasons why youth boot camps don’t work to modify behavior—in fact, boot camps can make undesirable behaviors worse.

Only Short-Term Changes Occur At Boot Camps

While boot camps are a popular type of troubled teen program, these strict camps are only effective at creating short-term changes for their charges. While attending a youth boot camp, teens are provided with a highly-regulated setting, where they are expected to comply with orders and are often required to undertake a lot of physical exertion. These factors combine to create a more compliant teen.

Once removed from the strenuous environment, many troubled teens backslide into their old bad habits. Some teens may hide their delinquency so that their parents do not send them back to a boot camp, but the changes are skin-deep at best.

Behavioral Modification Requires Therapy

Youth boot camps rely almost solely on experiential therapy—a therapeutic practice that uses experiences to affect behavioral changes—to create behavioral modifications in their charges. While there is merit in incorporating experiential therapy into a troubled teen’s rehabilitation, it should not be the primary therapeutic method.

Poor behavior is rooted in internal causes, and to properly address the source, therapy with a qualified therapist is vital to lasting behavioral modification. As most youth boot camps lack licensed therapeutic staff, it is no wonder why teens’ behaviors never truly change.

Military-Like Discipline May Send The Wrong Message

Since youth boot camps are designed to mimic a military boot camp, there are usually authoritarian figures in charge of the teens. The barking, strict discipline offered by these individuals can reinforce the idea in teens that the most effective way to behave is to be aggressive and use power to control others.

So, if you have a teen who struggles with anger management, a youth boot camp is the last place you should consider sending them.

No After-Program Assistance With Behavior Modification

Not only are youth boot camps short programs, but there is usually no after-program transition home assistance offered. As there is little opportunity for permanent transformation over the course of the boot camp, it becomes difficult for parents to provide their teens with the structure they need to maintain the changes they may have started to make.

Here at Liahona Treatment Center, our residential treatment center provides structure, multiple types of therapy, academic support, and family rebuilding assistance for troubled teen boys. Contact us to learn more about our program and how it can help your family.

Many teens naturally become more private as they grow older, no longer sharing every detail of their lives with their parents. While this withdrawal is tough, it is an important part of your teen’s development. However, some troubled teens become secretive because they are hiding a substance abuse problem.

We want to help you identify the difference between a natural desire for privacy and substance abuse issues, as well as covering how a residential treatment center can help your child make important changes.

Signs Your Teen Is Abusing Drugs

Unless you catch your teen in the act of using drugs or have them take random drug tests, you will need to look for several different signs to see if they are involved in substance abuse.

• Check your medicine cabinet - Many parents immediately think of street drugs when discussing teen substance abuse. But many teens find their fix at home, abusing opioids prescribed to other family members.
• Teen’s location is unknown - If your teen regularly disappears, and you don’t know where they are or when they will return, this can be a sign they are abusing illegal substances or engaged in other activities your teen knows you wouldn’t approve of if you knew about them.
• Personal changes appear - Watch your teen for a variety of personal changes that seem to have no explanation such as bloodshot eyes, poor personal hygiene, smokey smells clinging, and frequent fatigue or hunger.
• Drop in activity levels - If your teen’s grades have dropped, this can be a sign of substance abuse. Often, as their grades drop, teens who abuse drugs also lose interest in activities they used to like to do.

Residential Treatment Centers Help Teens Overcome Substance Abuse

Once you have identified that your teen has a substance abuse problem, it is vital to give them the help they need. Attending a rehab center is an essential step, but if your teen returns home after a short stay in rehab to detox, there is a high likelihood that your teen will relapse. Instead, you should consider a residential treatment center for troubled teens as the next step in your teen’s recovery.

There is a variety of ways that a residential treatment center can help your teen make important changes in their life.

• When in treatment, your teen will receive daily therapy to help them uncover the root cause behind their substance abuse.
• Academics will be addressed, helping your teen recover from the damage their drug abuse did to their grades.
• Teens attending a residential treatment center learn new skills such as culinary arts, music, community service abilities, and more, helping troubled teens replace bad habits.

If your teen has struggled with substance abuse and has not been able to make permanent lifestyle changes, contact us. Our program advisors can answer your questions and tell you whether Liahona Treatment Center is right for your teenage son.