Peter S.
Please do not send your child here
Please, to any parent considering sending their child here, I beg of you, consider how treatment facilities like this affect your relationship with your child. The lasting resentment and distrust that this will leave your child with will permanently set back and complicate your relationship because of these three reasons. The first is that it will leave them resentful and hurt. No matter how many times you say it, no matter how true it is, they will feel that they were sent here because they were not good enough, for their family, their school, or for themselves. Even if they understand the reasons why they were sent here, the bottom line will persist: that everyone else was good enough to live in a normal household, to go to a normal school, to have a normal life, and they were not. The second is that it is forever. Yes, at some point your child will leave the program, but there are two things that will persist after: first, the resentment and even hatred of you for sending them here, and second the fear of going back again, to this or another facility. Indeed, they will never truly be able to live at home again, as they will constantly be looking over their shoulder, in fear that they will once again fall short of everyone else's expectations. And third, the program does not actually help them behaviorally. It does not make them a better, more intelligent, or functional person, or even instill in them the desire to make themselves onto one; instead, it makes them into perfectly obedient people-pleasers, and makes them desire to conform to the expectations and rules of society, keeping them in a box and destroying their creativity and individuality.