The Early Vision of Parenthood
Almost all parents have a Hollywood moment when their children come into their lives. As parents, we have a vision of anticipated future shared experiences with our child. We envision those trembling first steps as our child propels themselves the few inches unaided between the outstretched hands of the parent.
We anticipate the interests and playful activities in which our child will engage, like learning how to ride a bicycle, a tricycle, a skateboard, or other conveyances. We’re practicing with our child in the park or the backyard as they develop rudimentary sports or athletic skills, and then attending those first competitions, frantically yelling instruction and encouragement from the sideline.
School Years and Growing Anticipation
There is the anticipation of the first school experiences: preparing for homework sessions with our child at the kitchen table, attending parent day at school, or sitting in the audience as our child recites the poem they wrote, or presents the musical selection they have practiced and prepared. There tends to be a thoughtful pondering about the kinds of things that will be interesting to our child.
What will they like to do? What can we teach them? And how best are we able to engage them in a world they may find exciting? Perhaps there are visions of our children as they are maturing into adolescence—those who are progressing through school and developing the skill sets they initiated at a young age into a particular competency in the classroom, in the athletic realm, and in forums suggesting a strong march towards mastery of young adulthood.
Facing Unexpected Challenges
Typical. Anyway, without exception, during these early moments of anxious anticipation, no parent expects that at some point in their child’s development, they will come to the realization that as parents, they have little to no influence in their child’s life. There is no expectation that the small infant, wrapped so cozily in our arms at present, will at some point find themselves out of control and left alone.
Living a life completely fueled by dependencies and deception. No parent expects to have a child who will ultimately require some form of intervention that includes an actual separation from the immediate family residence. No parent anticipates the distress, worry, and confusion that dominate life when a child has become mired in addiction, dependency, and avoidance.
The Desperation of Parents
Desperate parents ruminate concerning those questions of how life became so far removed from that early vision. How did it get to be like this? When and how did I lose my position as a parent in my child’s life and become nothing more than a droning object with less significance than the stimulation being mainlined into my child’s brain through their earbuds?
As a parent, am I merely resigned to abandoning that vision and embracing the contemptuous power struggle that has become the pervasive influence within the relationship with my child? Is there a reset that will return us to a neutral setting where the possibility of resuming the original vision can even be plausible?
Evaluating Intervention Options
And as a parent, how do I determine the appropriateness of any one of the incredible array of interventions that appear to be available to me, claiming to be that sought-after reset button for my child? Upon initial inspection, most programs, particularly those that are administered outdoors, appear to be fundamentally similar.
The day-to-day activities of the students involved with outdoor behavioral health interventions do not vary much, given that everything the student does will be at a relatively primitive level. This is an inherent disruption in the student’s routine, which will obviously have a significant impact.
Nevertheless, unless the student’s ability to command the delivery of all of his or her dependencies is significantly disrupted, any treatment intervention will have little to no long-term effect. Overall treatment environments differ solely in their capacity to disrupt the dynamic that originally created and sustains the child’s dependency.
The Star Guides Difference
As well as in the ability to reveal to the student the person they have become. Unless the treatment regimen is organized at every level around the concept of disruption, the student will progress through the experience gaining knowledge concerning the wilderness environment and his or her personal capacity to adapt to that environment.
But the dynamic between child and parent remains the same. The components of a program, the goal of the program, exist primarily to provide a consistent structure, an environment in which the student is revealed. If the activities and elements of the program obfuscate who the child has become, then the parents will continue to be unsettled as to their position in the relationship with their child, as well as struggling to gain an accurate assessment concerning their child’s ability to engage in life without reliance upon dependencies.
While enrolled, the things that students do on a daily basis are quite straightforward and will be directly linked to immediate tasks of welfare and comfort. There are new skills to be acquired and many opportunities to enhance learning on an experiential level. Yes, there are many things for your child to do during the Star Guides experience, but the most important of those tasks will be to recognize themselves as an individual whose competencies extend beyond their capacity to command various dependencies and to reestablish their parents as the parents in the relationship.
When this happens, the original vision will once again have a fighting chance.
Enroll Your Teen At Star Guides
Do you have a teen that is struggling with technology addiction, or sexual addiction? Click the link below to discuss if Star Guides Treatment Centers is the right solution for them!