The Family Foundation School has received notice from The Joint Commission that it has granted accreditation for all services surveyed under their Comprehensive Manual for Behavioral Health Care.  The school participated in an site visit review this past fall.  The school has maintained The Joint Commission’s Goal Seal of Accreditation since it first participated in the extensive site survey and internal review process in 2008.

The Joint Commission notes that “this process is designed to help your organization continuously provide safe, high-quality care, treatment, and services by identifying opportunities for improvement in your processes and helping you follow through on and implement these improvements.”

Given the pace of life these days, it takes a great deal of willpower to slow down, and even more to just stop and wait. Patience is a virtue that few troubled teens possess. We’ve seen many students do amazing work here only to turn 18 and walk away from the school because they literally couldn’t wait to try their wings. Many make it, but many falter, and still others return, sadder but wiser. Some parents who have also lost their struggle with impatience and taken a student out of school have confessed “repenting in leisure” as well. Other students, who are just as impatient, nevertheless wait it out, seeing their commitment through to graduation or until they’ve completed their prescribed character education program. Their paths are invariably smoother for the waiting. “He that can have patience can have what he will,” observed Benjamin Franklin.

Those facing a decision are well advised to wait if they feel confused, or conflicted, or coerced. In her recent article “The Transformative Power of Waiting,” mentoring and recovery expert Shannon Cutts, says, “In any situation where an emotion other than peace is goading us to action, waiting is always an expression of wisdom.” We need to let waiting inform our decisions, especially major decisions, and act only when we feel clear, confident and at peace. Read the complete article here.

We talk a lot about change here at the school. The word is right there in our tag line, “Building character, changing lives.” As we all know, though, change is one of those words that’s easier said than done. Those of us into making New Years resolutions are reminded of that sad fact every time January rolls around.

Now scientists have figured out one reason why half of us who resolve in January to make changes in our lives are bowed in defeat by July. It’s because willpower appears to be a real form of mental energy, powered by glucose in the bloodstream, which is used up as we exert self-control. In other words, we fail because we simply run out of willpower. To keep our New Years resolutions, the researchers advise us to anticipate the limits of our willpower.

“People with the best self-control, paradoxically, are the ones who use their willpower less often. Instead of fending off one urge after another, these people set up their lives to minimize temptations. They play offense, not defense, using their willpower in advance so that they avoid crises, conserve their energy and outsource as much self-control as they can.”

The article (which you can read in its entirety here) lists 7 helpful tips for resolution-makers, which anyone familiar with the 12 Steps will recognize.

Set single goals. (“K.I.S.S.”)

Precommit. (“Stick with the winners.”)

Outsource self-control. (“Let go and let God.”)

Keep track. (“One day at a time.”)

Don’t overreact to a lapse. (“Keep coming back, it works if you work it.”)

Tomorrow is another taste. (“First Things First”)

Reward often. (“Hugs not drugs.”)

Perfectionism is one of those traits that looks benign on the surface but has many destructive effects. Like depression. Constantly falling short of your own expectations is demoralizing and self damaging. “Depression loves a perfectionist!”

Or how about addiction? Perfectionists see everything in black and white with no grey in the middle. They’re either perfectly awful or perfectly wonderful. Nothing is more common in the addictive personality than this either-or, all-or-nothing thinking.

Many troubled teens here are in fact perfectionists. They might have been into drinking, drugs, or other compulsive behaviors before coming here, but after they arrive many do an about-face. From ignoring schoolwork to obsessing about it. From no program to the perfect program—even as they contemplate the program slogan, “progress, not perfection.”  That’s a hard one to grasp if you’re a perfectionist.

What is needed for these students—and for all of us who agonize over being the perfect parent, the perfect spouse, the perfect anything—is a daily dose of acceptance. We need to find that balance. To admit and even embrace the grey areas in our lives, recognizing that it’s our triumphs and achievements together with our faults and failures that make us human. We need to acknowledge that nobody is perfect and be okay with that.

By Sid Parham

In the Dark Ages that were the late 1950’s, I was sent to a boarding school.  There, new students were subject to the demands of older students, held doors open for them, were subject to large group meetings run entirely by students about school culture and spirit, and if one was particularly recalcitrant one got a “tea party,” an individual meeting with a few senior students to point out errors and the cost of failing to comply.  My compatriots who stayed at home faced similar kinds of hazing at our public high school. Both administrations turned a blind eye to these activities because everyone believed they create a cohesive cohort and school spirit.

Obviously times have changed and these practices no longer exist at those schools and have never existed at the Family Foundation School.  The problem remains, “How are new students integrated into the school’s culture?” Quite by accident I witnessed a scene that showed how our culture works. I have just returned from a vacation.  Before I left I was assigned to be the faculty mentor to the new student.  I spoke with him briefly on the day of his arrival and so when I returned I sought him out.

I found that he had joined the cleaning crew his buddy was on and the he, his buddy, another senior student, and a staff member were cleaning the tutoring area. The two senior students had asked the new one to tell his story that led to the decision to send him to our school.  When I arrived, he was telling of the first years of his life.  He told his story as any sixteen year old boy would.  We learned of his actions, the drugs he’d taken, his parents’ drug use, his grandmother’s rescuing him.  But we learned nothing of his feelings or his hurts.  All the time this story is punctuated by the staff member asking the boys to sweep here or put those boxes there. By the time we’d finished the story was told and the room was clean.

The process was completed by the responses of the senior students. One said, “I’ll have to tell you my story.  My father is using again; it’s crazy.” The other, who comes from a more stable home environment said, “Your grandmother must really love you.  She sounds like a good person.”  In this short hour the new students experienced how the school works.  We know the world will not stop because of our problems—rooms must be swept, food made, lessons completed. The school and AA believe that the group of individuals sharing their “experience, strength, and hope” provides real comfort and support, and that the acknowledgement of our errors helps us to see the good in others.  In a small way the new student became an integral part of the school.

Here’s a P.S. to last week’s Leadership blog (“Good News, Bad News”) about the increased use of marijuana by high school students. The jump in use is even greater for synthetic marijuana. These mixtures of herbs and chemicals widely known as “spice” or “K2” were sold legally until recently, often as “herbal incense,” in convenience stores and gas stations and on various websites.

Synthetics have been popular with high school students because of their reputation for delivering  a powerful high that is legal, easy to get, hard to detect, and without the dangers of other drugs. But calls to hot lines, emergency departments and poison control centers (where calls have almost doubled since last year) indicate the contrary.

“These drugs are just as dangerous as drugs obtained illegally on the street,” says Dr. John Cole, medical director of the Minnesota Poison Control Center. Cole says in many cases synthetics are more dangerous than even methamphetamines and cocaine. “They cause cardiac problems, seizures, kidney failure and can even cause muscle breakdown,” said Cole. “They’re very dangerous compounds.”

Last March, the Drug Enforcement Administration declared several chemicals in synthetic marijuana Schedule I drugs, banning them for a year. Synthetics are now banned in at least 40 states and Congress is considering legislation that would ban them permanently. If they’re not on parents’ radar screens, they should be.

A study released last week by the National Institutes of Health has found that overall use of alcohol, cigarettes and cocaine among teenagers is slowly declining. The long-running annual report, called the Monitoring the Future survey, looked at more than 46,000 students nationwide. It found that teens are using less crack, cocaine, over-the-counter cough and cold medicines, sedatives, tranquilizers and prescription drugs like Adderall and the narcotic painkiller Vicodin. Heavy drinking among high school students also fell, and binge drinking is down by a third from what it was 20 years ago. Even energy drink consumption in high school students has dropped, and their willingness to try most other drugs is on the wane.

The bad news is that marijuana use is up.  The report found that one out of every 15 high school students smokes marijuana on a near daily basis, a figure that has reached a 30-year peak. The popularity of marijuana, which is now more prevalent among 10th graders than cigarette smoking, reflects what researchers and drug officials say is a growing perception among teenagers that habitual marijuana use carries little risk of harm. That perception is fueled in part by wider familiarity with medicinal marijuana and greater ease in obtaining it. Medical marijuana is legal in 16 states. And although another study notes a decline in fatal car accidents in those states, in part because people may be substituting marijuana smoking for drinking alcohol, Christian Thurstone, M.D., a specialist in adolescent psychology and addiction, sees disturbing, long-term consequences to increased use of marijuana by teens. Read the full article here.

Anger issues are part and parcel of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)—a diagnosis that a significant number of students struggle with here at FFS. As a rule, these students tend to feel and express their emotions more strongly. Many of them also suffer from the depression and anxiety that frequently accompany ADHD, making them even more prone to irritability and feelings of being overwhelmed.

In many ways, the environment of a therapeutic boarding school is ideal for these teens. Much of what experts like clinical psychologist Ari Tuckman say can minimize the affects of the disorder, students are getting right here: plenty of sleep and physical exercise. Clear and consistently enforced rules. Limited exposure to media (e.g. violent  television and video games which can exacerbate impulse control problems). And an exceptional Anger Management program.

Tuckman notes that anger is a legitimate emotion whose expression need not be destructive. “Anger can tell us that someone is pushing our boundaries or treating us unfairly,” he says. We just have to know how to use it. To read the complete article, click here.