TED Conversations

Lori Blum-Fagien

Senior Executive Director of Preventive Healthcare and Wellness, Consultant - Health and Wellness

This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »

If your teen is in crisis, struggling yet intelligent, would u remove them from school & send them to a character building boarding school?

Teens who are doing well academically in school yet troubled and in crisis fall through the cracks of most private and public schools. Their path is off track and they need to be diverted back to their journey they deserve. Each teen has their own unique destiny and potential. When a parent feels the loss of "parenting" and communication skills breakdown in the family & between the parents, whether married, divorced, or blended is challanged when a teen performs academically well in school but the conflict at home is confusing the directed discipline of the teen. Would you remove your teen from the home and school environment? Rebuild your family communication with the siblings and your significant other? Do you know or believe in character building boarding school that teaches confidence, principals, values and core family values involving the entire family to rebuild a better future through open communication? Do you have experience or can recommend a boarding school like Hyde Schools as an alternative rather than a therapeutic program and knows that Hyde stands for teaching curiousity, humility, inspiration, honesty and confidence so your teen can become the leader you know they are; facing challenges as an opportunity versus a crisis.

Topics: Boarding Schools Self-Confidence Teenagers best you community values esteem parenting teeenage deceptions
+2
Share:
progress indicator
  • thumb

    Lori Blum-Fagien

    • 0
    Aug 8 2011: Her sister went through some similar issues due to my marital situation and she blossomed when she went away to a character bulilding not therapeutic type of school and I'm frustrated about the parenting being one sided and difficult to enforce my parenting skills when I was married.
  • thumb

    jeffrey friesen 20+

    • 0
    Aug 8 2011: Do what you feel is right.

    I have a question. What is it about the current situation that makes you feel that a change is needed?
  • thumb

    James Turner 10+

    • 0
    Aug 5 2011: May I suggest that a year in an Independent Study program at your local school might be of benefit. As an independent study teacher of grades 6 - 12 I have seen a lot of students make positive changes when they get away from the social environment of say for instance a high school. Most teens are just fighting the battle between becoming adults and still wanting to some degree to be children. Some of it has to do with age, social climate, and some has to do with development of the brain itself. Brain experts say that the teen age years are the hardest because of the hormonal development of the human brain at that period in their life. The frontal lobes are still developing so self control can be an issue that is organically based. Sometimes the best communication fix is just to listen. When I am working with students sometimes they just need to talk about how the feel about issues in their life. We put the lesson aside and I just listen.
    There is one program that I recommend called Upward Bound which is a summer program that challenges teens and develops team and solo accomplishment. I have never hear of the Hyde School but will do some research to add it to my list of options for parents also. There are times it is necessary to just get away from home and then a boarding school like you mentioned can be good. I might recommend a Montessori School if it is a boarding school also. The Montessori system is a different way of doing things that leads to the character traits you are defining. I might also recommend a book called Failing Forward as a family read. These are just things from my teaching experience that have helped some of my students.
    James

  • Max Wagner

    • 0
    Aug 5 2011: Most people today have (had) a phase in their life that they would now call "being on the wrong track" - isolating a child from its environment and taking away its possibility to find its own way out will most probably turn out to have been a bad decision. Every human has to find his own way through life, your child included. The fact that the child still performs well academically is a very strong sign that it's dedicated to not letting its life go to waste. My tip: do not interfere - you might prevent your child from having the empowering experience of finding out what his track in life will be.

    (As a side point, you probably don't want to send your child to a conservative boarding school in these times - there will be a lot of society that'll change for the better, and a conservative approach is never a good approach in that light.)
  • thumb

    Tim blackburn 30+

    • +2
    Aug 3 2011: teens are not so hard to figure out. If they are doing well in school and actually put in the effort to do well, then whatever struggles they are dealing with would prob be directed to the parents. as usual.

    sounds to me, character buliding school is a replacement for parenting.
Showing all 5 comments