Adjusting to Life At Home After Therapeutic Boarding School

Having your teen home from his time at a therapeutic boarding school can be a time filled with so many conflicting emotions. For the teen, parents, and other members of the family. Doing your part to help your teen adjust to life at home can help to make the transition smoother for all. When your teen leaves therapeutic boarding school, he will be prepared by his counselors and often be sent home with a packet of information and resources to help him adjust to being back at home. Even with the best of preparation, your teen may feel overwhelmed, anxious, and nervous about what to expect. Keeping him comfortable and making sure that the adjustment phase is relatively smooth can help to keep him from taking major steps back from the progress he made during his time in the therapeutic boarding school.

What can you do to help?

As a parent, you may feel just as confused and overwhelmed as your teen who is coming home. How has he changed during his time at therapeutic boarding school? How do you establish boundaries for a teen you haven’t spent much time with? How can you make sure that you’re meeting his needs while still meeting the needs of your household? Two ways you can help your teen adjust:

• Speak with his counselors and learn all that you can about your teen and his experiences while he’s been away from home. They will have good insight to help you learn more about who your teen is today. They will also be able to offer a few tips to help your teen adjust to this new phase.
• Define the boundaries of your household so that your teen understands what is expected of him. Explain that these boundaries are essential to ensure that everyone in the home feels appreciated, heard, and safe.

There should be no room for confusion or filling in the gaps with assumptions. Your teen may push back on some of the boundaries you establish, but this is expected. Don’t get too demanding with the rules of the household. You do want to establish them, but you also want to listen to how your teen is feeling and thinking. To make your teen feel welcomed back into your home and ensure the adjustment phase is easy for all, you need to involve him in some decision-making processes. His comfort levels need to be considered when you’re setting boundaries and establishing appropriate consequences for breaking those boundaries.

Steps your teen can take

Understanding what your teen needs and helping him to accomplish the steps that will help him can ease the adjustment period. Your team is sure to feel overwhelmed and stressed about going home. Steps your teen can take to ease any overwhelming or stressful feelings during his transition:

• Speak to you about what his concerns about being at home are. Your teen should be open and honest with you, so be sure to create an environment where he feels safe to speak.
• Discuss what his boundaries are with being home. This could include his boundaries about whether he’s comfortable with someone coming into his bedroom without knocking, or perhaps boundaries about being hugged or going to the grocery store. Whatever they may be, it can help him adjust if you and other family members respect these boundaries.
• Learn the house rules, including boundaries to keep him safe. He should feel comfortable discussing some of the rules and boundaries if he disagrees with them.
• Prepare himself for returning to school or considering home school options. Your teen needs to get an education and graduate from high school. If he does not feel comfortable going to in-person school, you should be willing to approach options that will help his comfort levels.

Your teen returning home after therapeutic boarding school will come with an adjustment period. There’s no getting around that. It’s important that your teen understands that his return home is something everyone in the family is happy about and is something that he should look forward to.