There are many teenagers and young adults in treatment facilities and troubled youth camps across the nation who come from terrible home lives where one or both parents are drug addicts, alcoholics, or abusers, but there are just as many troubled youths who come from families who seem perfectly normal and stable. Many troubled youths actually come from families who, on the surface, seem pretty much perfect – the parents have been married for decades, make plenty of money, and seem interested in what their kids do and who they are becoming. Sometimes appearances are deceiving, but as often as not, people who really want to have a good, stable family and to raise well-adjusted children just don’t know how.
This is where family intervention comes in. Family intervention can take many forms. Maybe mom and dad just need to read a couple of parenting and relationship books that will really help them understand how they can improve the boundaries in their home and their relationships with and between their children. It could also look like a trusted friend or pastor coming into the home and talking to the family as a whole about their dynamic and what could be changed or improved. In its most drastic form, family intervention involves professional family counseling in which the entire family sees a counselor separately and together.
You may think that this is just an attempt to blame a child’s choices on the parent’s prior decision, but that’s not the case at all. The truth is that both factors are at work in a troubled youth’s life. Maybe his parents don’t really know how to listen to him, so he feels misunderstood and lashes out by picking fights and making rash decisions. Now, his choices are still his own choices, and he’s old enough to know better, but, on the other hand, if his parents learn how to really listen, they might alleviate some of the emotional pressure that is causing him to act out, solving the problem before it reaches the next stage of escalation.
Some youth workers and counselors think family intervention is so important, in fact, that they require it of the families who enroll children in their residential treatment facilities for troubled youth. If parents want their children to complete the program, they, too, must work to fix the problems at home that might be causing some of the child’s pain and frustration. Family intervention can improve the family dynamic even in divorced or separated families, teaching parents to work as a team to understand their child and to build her up instead of tearing her down.
So if your son or daughter is struggling with problems that go above and beyond normal teenage angst, consider seeing a family therapist who may be able to give you insight into how your family can change to help your teenager through the roughest years of his or her life. It might just be the best parenting decision you ever make.