Teen Behavior Modification Schools - Just A Place To Warehouse Your Teen

Are Behavior Modification Schools Just A Teen Warehouse?

The teen help industry has gotten a bad rap in recent years, and for good reason. Many of these "schools" or programs prey on desperate parents who aren't thinking they straight. They manipulate them and take thousands of Dollars of their hard earned money. All the while promising qualified therapists, a good education, and a safe place for your teen.

In reality many of these programs are in small towns and third world countries who just use the cheap  and might I add, often unqualified" labor, of the local towns to educate and counsel your child. Some of these programs even abuse and neglect your kids.

Are Behavior Modification Program Just Warehousing Teens? 

As someone who spent 7 months in one such program, I don't mean to paint all teen help centers, programs, and schools with a broard brush, but in terms of the specific program I lived at, it was nothing more than a place to warehouse your teenager. 

I was in a WWASP program. They charged somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000 per month per teen. Though the teachers may have been "qualified" teachers, the education curriculum itself wasn't necessarily always enough to meet the standards of either college or a high school which a teen may return to. I personally knew a number of peers of mine who returned home to either go to college or return to their own high school only to learn that their credits didn't transfer over or were not adaquete. 

I'll touch on education in more detail in a future post, however just to give you an idea of what the schooling is like. Your "family" ie your group of other teens you live with are your classmates. Each student is working at their own pace doing their own work. You are given a textbook which you read and self teach yourself. At the end of a lesson or chapter you take a short 10 or 20 question test of which I believe you had to get somewhere between 70% and 80% to pass. 

Now keep in mind there is only one test, so if you take the test once and fail, you can pretty much just memorize the answers and retake the test. I shoudl also add that you grade your own test oftentimes. 

While there were some good teachers who actually cared, others, when you asked them for help would tell you take the test, fail it, figure out the answers and retake it. 

The entire structure of the education program is reading a textbook yourself and taking a short test. To me this doesn't really demonstrate that you know how to learn, so much as you know how to memorize or even copy/cheat. 

There are no essay tests, there is no classroom discussion, and there really is no supplementary materials so in my humble opinion teenagers in these programs are getting a very subpar education. As if that wasn't bad enough, when the parents of these teenagers are paying thousands of Dollars per month which could potentially probably send these teenagers to a top of the line boarding school or private school, they are instead paying all this money to essentially have these teens do something which they could essentially do at home for free. 

The food served in these programs is basically prison food. Heavy calories starch based food which is not only cheap but causes people to gain weight so they can feed you less and not have teens losing weight and complaining about being malnourished.

As far as counseling, I don't see much counseling being done in these programs and honestly counseling consists of a 30 minute or possibly one hour group session which is really nothing more than a gripe session with a counselor listening to complaints from each family of 12 to 15 teens complaining about bad food, they need to see a doctor, etc. At the specific program I was at, I don't believe there was even a licensed or properly trained counselor on staff.

Now I don't mean to sound as if nobody cares. Though maybe not officially licensed or trained there are a few good apples, a few good "counselors" who actually seem to care about kids and want the best for them, but it's far from being the overwhelming majority, and if I was a parent thinking my child was being cared for by properly licensed and trained professionals I would be unhappy with the reality of the situation.

My point here, and again,  I don't mean to paint all programs with a broad brush, but nothing about the WWASP program I was in really seemed to really care or put any real emphasis on education or counseling. If this weren't so sad, it would almost be funny, because the entire sales pitch to parents is their kid isn't going to graduate high school if they continue on their current path, and their kid is damaged and needs counseling and care. Just give us a few thousand Dollars a month and we'll provide that, and then that very same program who really in fact is out for nothing more than money skimps on two of the very things they claim to parents is so important.

Ultimatley, my experience in a teen behavior modification program wasn't really getting any help or improving myself. Essentially what it feels like is warehousing your teen. Unlike some wilderness programs which are 30, 60, maybe even 90 day programs, most WWASP programs are long term program, sometimes with teens being there for as much as 4 or 5 years. That's great for the WWASP bank account but not so great for teens and/or parents.

I can actually see some value in a short term wilderness camp. Shock to the teens system, get them away from their normal environment, get them to appreciate some of the small things they have at home and basically just to take a step back and do some self assessment and learn some new skills. When the program however lasts for years, taking a teen away from their family, friends, school, etc, at that point its nothing more than warehousing the kid.

Now if you feel you have a terrible kid who's behind helping and you want them to make it to their 18th birthday without killing themself or someone else, and you think this is the only option, then by all means warehouse your child for a couple years and hopefully by the time they turn 18 maybe you luck out and they mature a bit or calm down a bit. But for those parents who's teens are just a bit rebellious or just need a little wakup call, I don't think sending your child off for years to a program is good for you, your child, or your family.