Making the decision to send your child to a higher level of care is something no parent takes lightly.
By the time you reach that point, you’ve probably already tried everything you know how to do. You’ve hoped things would get better, held onto the good stretches, and wondered if maybe you had finally turned a corner.
In this episode, I talk about what happens emotionally when you realize your child may need more help than you can provide at home, and why making that decision doesn’t necessarily quiet the fear.
Did I make the right choice?
Will treatment work?
What happens if things get hard again?
These are difficult questions, and they don’t always have simple answers.
Let’s talk about what it means to make one of the hardest decisions a parent can face, and what you may need to remember along the way.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
00:03
Have you reached the end of your rope trying to help your child? Are you wondering how to help your teen find their way back to themselves and you don’t know what to do next?
00:12
I’m your host, Mary Warren, and I’m here to share with you information, stories, and possible solutions to help you find the best options for your teen and family.
00:23
Are you ready to start thinking about parenting and relationships in a new way? If you are, take a breath, relax, and let’s talk.
00:35
When a higher level of care outside of the home becomes necessary, knowing it may be the right decision doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking.
00:44
You don’t just wake up one morning and decide you need to send your child to a higher level of care. There’s usually a lot that has happened before you ever get to that point.
00:54
You’ve probably spent a long time hoping things would get better.
00:58
There have been second chances, fresh starts, and times when things seemed to be better, even for a little while, and you wanted to believe maybe you’d finally turned a corner until you realize you haven’t.
01:14
And that’s when the decision you never wanted to have to make starts becoming the decision you know you may have to make. That’s where so much of the emotion comes from.
01:24
You can know your child needs more help and still question yourself as a parent. You can still wonder how you got here and whether you somehow could have prevented it.
01:35
And underneath all of that can be an even harder question: Did I fail my kid? Needing a higher level of care doesn’t mean you failed as a parent.
01:45
It means you’ve reached a point where what is happening is bigger than what you can manage at home. Recognizing that can be one of the hardest parts.
01:56
Even when you believe this is the right next step, the fear doesn’t necessarily go away. It just changes.
02:04
Before treatment, much of the fear is about what could happen if things keep going the way they are. Once they’re getting more help, a different kind of fear sets in.
02:14
You start wondering what all of this will mean on the other side. You want to believe the decision you made will make a difference.
02:23
And eventually, that fear starts to sound like one question: Is this going to work? Of course, parents want an answer to that question.
02:33
You’ve trusted people you don’t really know with someone you love more than anything. That’s not an easy thing to do. You’re no longer the one who knows what they’re doing every day.
02:45
You’re relying on a team to care for them, understand them, and help them in ways you haven’t been able to at home.
02:52
And even when you know they’re where they need to be, that doesn’t mean you stop worrying. You want to know they’re okay and that this is helping. Then little by little, you begin to see progress.
03:06
Maybe a conversation feels different, or you hear something from the therapist that gives you hope. For the first time in a while, you start to breathe a little easier and allow yourself to believe.
03:17
We’re getting somewhere. This is working. Parents need to feel that hope.
03:24
The progress you’re seeing can be very real, but real progress isn’t the same as a guaranteed outcome, and that’s where this gets complicated.
03:33
Someone can make tremendous progress and still struggle later. That doesn’t mean the progress wasn’t real, and it doesn’t mean treatment failed.
03:43
While they’re there, they’re surrounded by skilled staff and working with a therapist.
03:48
They have structure, support, and care around them twenty-four hours a day while they learn and practice new skills. They’re not trying to figure all of this out on their own.
04:00
When something gets hard, people are right there to help them work through it and practice doing things differently.
04:07
But eventually, they have to take those skills back into everyday life, and that’s different.
04:13
Learning a skill with that much support around you and being able to use it when life gets hard outside of that setting are not always the same thing.
04:23
One of the hardest moments for a parent can come when things start getting hard again. You’ve already made the difficult decision to get a higher level of care.
04:31
You’ve gotten through the separation and watched progress happen. You started allowing yourself to believe things were changing, and then something happens.
04:41
Things begin to unravel again, and suddenly you’re right back in a place that feels painfully familiar. You remember how well they were doing.
04:51
You thought things were changing, and now you’re trying to understand what this means. Was all of the progress real? Are we really back here again?
05:01
And for some parents, that old feeling of failure comes right back in. I’ve walked alongside families in this exact place.
05:10
I try to remind them that struggling again doesn’t erase the progress they’ve made. It doesn’t erase the work or the skills learned. This is something I say to parents all the time.
05:21
The skills learned in treatment are still there. Just because you aren’t seeing them being used right now doesn’t mean they’re all gone.
05:30
I’ve seen those skills show up later, sometimes when a parent isn’t expecting it at all, and that’s when they realize that even though things are hard right now, something did stick.
05:42
This is also where the question of guarantees becomes very real. When I begin working with a family to help them find the right place, I’m honest and very transparent about this from the beginning.
05:54
We can do all the homework and find a program that we believe is the right fit, but no one can promise an outcome. That is a hard one. You want so badly to know you’re making the right choice.
06:07
I’ve watched treatment make an incredible difference in the lives of kids and their families, and some of those kids are still doing really well years later.
06:16
I’ve also walked alongside families where things haven’t gone the way any of us had hoped. That’s the reality of this work. There are no guarantees.
06:26
A higher level of care can provide support and an opportunity to do things differently, but it can’t guarantee what happens after that.
06:33
At some point, it’s up to our kids to decide how they’re gonna use the skills they’ve learned. That’s one of the hardest things for a parent to accept.
06:42
When you’ve made a big decision like this, you wanna know it’s worth it. You want to believe you did the right thing.
06:49
And one thing I say to parents is this, “No matter the outcome, at least when you go to bed at night, you know you did everything you could possibly do to help your kid, and they can never look back and say, ‘Why didn’t you at least try treatment for me?'” And sometimes, as a parent, you have to hold on to that.
07:14
Thank you for listening today. I’m your host, Mary Warren, and I’m so grateful you found this podcast.
07:20
I invite you to visit my website at empowermyteen.com and schedule a complimentary consultation to discuss your situation.
07:29
Remember, you are a caring and concerned parent, and your child is lucky to have you in their life, so please be kind to yourself.
