Ten Common Mistakes Parents Make (when selecting residential placements)
This is you and every other parent out there. You are not alone. You thought process when it comes to residential treatment is in the majority. After you read this list, if you feel that you have checked more than half of this list, reach out to the professional to help you.
We want a place close to home
Parents often think that is they can keep their child close to home it will somehow help with the treatment process. The truth: there is no correlation. If anything, the further a young person is from home when they do treatment, they more likely they will have the space to change.
We want something affordable
Quality treatment is not inexpensive. If you champagne quality treatment on a beer budget, you are going to be slapped in the face with the reality of your situation. No, we do not expect that only families in the 1% can afford quality treatment. What families do not realize though is that if you go cheap first, you may end up paying a lot more in the long run. How, you ask? Well, you went cheap treatment, you got cheap quality. Maybe that level of quality did not help your young adult. So, you find yourself 3 months, 6 months, or 12 months later back in the same situation again – looking for treatment. It is better to find quality treatment out of the gate and pay for it rather than always go with the lowest bidder!
We want our teen fixed
Your child is not broken. Humans do not break. Certainly, do we fall in ruts and struggle? Yes. But do we break when it comes to mental health? No. If you are asking for a “fix,” you are going to be quickly told that is not how this works. The sooner you realize this is not about fixing your child, the smoother this will play out.
That school helped our friend’s child
Just because it worked for them certainly does not mean it will work for you. Hopefully, this doesn’t need a lot of explaining. Every child is different. I am glad that one program worked for your friend’s child. For your own child, it may be the furthest from the best-fitting program as you could get.
A six-month placement should do it
My initial rebuttal is “where did you get that timeline from?” If there is research, please send it to me to read. For a young adult, six months is only the beginning. Realistically, you are looking at twelve months for
We are looking for a military school or a boot camp
Woof. Why? First, these programs are a) not common, and b) not ethical. If your child needs a program to help get them in line, a military school or boot camp may be more traumatic for them in the long run! There are plenty of ethical programs out there that have a softer approach in connecting with a client to understand their resistance. Sending your loved one away to military school or boot camp could be creating more damage than healing.
We can trust what professionals tell us
Take anything than anyone says to you with a grain of salt. If you are asking a Psychiatrist for recommendations for therapeutic placement you have to remind yourself that their training and knowledge is medically based around medical management. If a School Counselor tells you about one private school they knew about, take their recommendation with a grain of salt. Unless you talking with a Therapeutic Consultant, who specifically travels around the US visiting treatment programs, any professional who is recommending a program or placement to you may be completely off-base. Hire a Consultant to help you navigate these choppy waters!
We don’t need to tell the school/professional everything our child has done
Don’t be this parent. Any information you withhold can be a liability to you and your child. Professionals and programs ask questions in the admissions process not to be judgmental. Their job is to do all the information gathering to ensure that your child is appropriate for their program and will not jeopardize their current milieu. If you withhold information about your child, you could do some serious long-term danger for your child and to the program you are referring them to.
We will save money by finding a school or program by ourselves without the help of an Educational Consultant
This is furthest from the truth. It’s so much smarter to pay for a Consultant to help you narrow down your options. First, you may not know where to begin to look for options. Second, if you search on Google you will be more than overwhelmed with options. Third, when you start calling programs you learn than most if not all of them say that your child would be appropriate for their program and they have space. So how do you know if they’re ethical? How do you know if they’re legit and safe? The only way to ensure that is to hire a Consultant.
We do not need to get the other parent involved
Another huge red flag. If this is an adolescent and there is joint custody, you absolutely need to have the other parent involved. If it is a young adult, there is a little more flexibility in what is appropriate for treatment. When it comes to the finances of it all, if one parent is willing to solely support the treatment continuum, then they can do that. But if you need the other parent to help financially chip in, you will need them involved from the onset. Treatment is not cheap. And if someone’s healing is dependent on the reparation work with one or both parents, well, one or both parents need to be involved in the treatment process.
In a time when people are trying to pinch pennies or cut corners to make treatment affordable, you may not realize that you are jeopardizing the overall well-being of our child. You need to hire a professional to help you navigate this process, period. And if you think you are getting quality mental health care by solely selecting the cheapest programmatic option, you are setting yourself and your loved one up for a multi-treatment cycle. In the end, you are going to pay a hell of a lot more money because you did not seek guidance in the beginning. Let that sink in.
For questions or comments contact Joanna.
