Loeta Educational Consultants

"I'm sorry, Just What is an Independent Educational Consultant?"

2012-02-06T16:59:00.000-08:00

It is a scene which has played out countless times for me over the years. I have the opportunity to exchange business cards with someone; after chatting for a bit they look at my card, and I watch their brow furrow more and more quizically as they read over my information. Eventualy the inevitable question comes: ”Just what is an Educational Consultant?”

While some of my colleagues may get frustrated by this question, I feel that for those of us in a relatively young (and rapidly growing) profession, we need to accept it. A case in point; last week on a tour of some adult rehab facilities, I ended up spending time describing the job of an Independent Educational Consultant (IEC).

I started, as I always do with my professional membership in IECA. I explained that being a member of IECA meant I had the highest professional standards, the broadest network of professionals and the support of a national organization. I went on to say that IECA is a large organization (900+ members) yet it is really organization about people and relationships. I also spoke of program visits, education centers, and advanced training. While they were appropriately impressed, I could tell that I was losing focus of what (in my opinion) an IEC really is. So I decided that I needed to tell them a story; a story I have told many times in the last 3 years, but it’s one which I feel epitomizes client/consultant teamwork.

Below is a letter written by one of my client’s parents, I wish I could tell you that I told their story this eloquently, but I can’t; what I can tell you that I don’t tout myself this much in my version of the story. Honestly, you can take my name out and insert any IEC...we all do the same thing...Also, while I’m in confession mode, I think I butchered the story a bit, but I think they got the drift…

So here is John’s* story, as told by Mom…

We knew in our hearts months before we came face to face with our 14-year-old son's activities, that we were entering into unchartered parental waters when it came to dealing with his unacceptable behavior. There was confusion and total terror not knowing what had happened to our wonderful, charming, smart, funny, pleasant son…and why.

Grounding him and serious monitoring of his every waking hour left us feeling exhausted from sleepless nights and emotionally sick from our never-ending suspicions. However, even these measures proved inadequate, because as although we were good, involved, and loving parents, we didn’t know what was happening. We were on a quest to find the right answer, but helpless and lost. Our dilemma was compounded by the fact that few of our social peers shared our zero tolerance toward drug and underage drinking policies. Close friends wanted to help, but didn't understand what it's like once your child begins to act out, and the "fear factor" of your child's survival enters your home.

At a critical moment, with police having just left our home, our son barricaded in his room, and our anniversary evening plans canceled, we received a life line from a friend of a friend. This man shared with absolute honesty his experience with his son and how an educational consultant, Bar Clarke, had helped him find his first glimmer of light in the tunnel of fear and darkness. He suggested we call Bar and went on to say that Bar saw his family through his son's therapeutic wilderness time and placement in a residential aftercare program. At the time of his call to us, his son was back at home attending college and was on a good life track.

This Good Samaritan was our introduction to educational consultants and we feel lucky that we did not have to interview ECs and flounder through this process. We had enough to worry about with our son, without the added stress of depending on an unknown EC.

Our son was on the young side and the thought of sending him away was heart wrenching and overwhelming. Bar was patient, informative, and never once pressured us to take action that we were not ready for. We were totally honest with Bar, our son's school administrators, and with ourselves. Our goal was to get help for our son, keep him safe, maintain our own sanity, and hopefully get him through 9th grade. Bar understood and supported our goal. He "hung in there with us" through many, many challenging moments and frantic phone calls. Six months after our first conversation with Bar, and a week after our son finished 9th grade, our son entered a wilderness program that Bar helped us find. Bar was an integral part of our family's very positive experience with our son's 11 week wilderness time.

Bar's familiarity with wilderness programs, working therapists, and therapeutic residential programs has been a tremendous component in our son's recovery and return to us from the dark side.

Working with Bar on an individually tailored process, we learned that your EC must tune in to you and your child, and interpret what each of you needs to be successful. The EC must understand the uniqueness of each child and family dynamics, and work within these parameters in an attempt to help the entire family. Not an easy task.

Bar's reputation with RTCs afforded our son the opportunity to attend a unique high school program that might not have otherwise accepted him. It was the right school for our son, and we never would have found it without Bar’s expertise.

Our son is our miracle child - he's flourishing, and his wonderful sense of self, humor, and desire to succeed is back. I am not sure we would be where we are today without Bar’s role in this process.

Dr. Leonard Sax Presenting on Gender Issues at Dallas IECA Conference

2011-11-08T17:58:00.000-08:00

For the last few months, I have been obsessed with reading two of Dr. Sax's books, "Boys Adrift" and "Girls on the Edge". I have found myself preaching the sermon according to Sax to anyone who will listen, and have had a wonderful time exchanging snippets of his books with friends and colleagues on Facebook and Twitter; and, oh yes, and in person as well!

In "Boys Adrift" Dr. Sax describes the five factors driving the decline of boys as:

Video Games. Studies suggest that some of the most popular video games are disengaging boys from real-world pursuits.

Teaching Methods. Profound changes in the way children are educated have had the unintended consequence of turning many boys off school.

Prescription Drugs. Overuse of medication for ADHD may be causing irreversible damage to the motivational centers in boys’ brains.

Endocrine Disruptors. Environmental estrogens from plastic bottles and food sources may be lowering boys’ testosterone levels, making their bones more brittle and throwing their endocrine systems out of whack.

Devaluation of Masculinity. Shifts in popular culture have transformed the role models of manhood. Forty years ago we had Father Knows Best; today we have The Simpsons.

In "Girls on the Edge" he looks at:

Sexual identity. Why bisexual girls may be more numerous and/or more evident today, particularly with regard to the sexualization of girlhood.

The cyberbubble. The typical teenage girl in the USA now sends 80 text messages per day, compared with 30 text messages per day sent by the typical teenage boy.

Obsessions. How common is cutting? Is cutting more common among girls than among boys? Even ten years ago, it was unusual to find girls cutting themselves. Today it's common.

Chapter 4: Endocrine disruptors. The risks of PET (polyethylene terephathalate)

These are fascinating reads, and ones which make you really think about children, and our role in helping them help themselves. I am eagerly anticipating attending Dr Sax's sessions at the IECA conference later this week in Dallas, and am looking forward to reporting back here with new insights gained...

Travel and the Independent Educational Consultant

2011-10-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

“No sweetie, really, it’s actually colder here!”

That was part of the phone call I had with my 12 year old daughter, when I called her from Newport Beach, CA last week. I had to laugh about it; I had left ME, where one expects it to be cold in the fall, and landed in a cold, wet, and I dare say dreary, southern CA. I know I shouldn’t complain, as IEC’s we do travel to some pretty remarkable places, and yes there are certain perks to the number of miles we fly (no checked bag fee, yeah!) But still… Rain? In Southern CA? Really?

Because of the amount of time we as Independent Educational Consultants spend on the road visiting schools, programs and clients; sometimes I think we get a bit jaded, overwhelmed, and well just plain old tired. After all, to maintain our membership in good standing with IECA, we have to visit programs and schools constantly, and in a busy year we can - when you figure that for those of us in the therapeutic world many of the programs are quite remote - sometimes be out of the office for a week and only have the chance to visit a few programs.

With that knowledge, when I kept hearing about School Connections and the opportunity it presented of meeting one on one with up to 30 school representatives, coupled with the fact that I had only heard great things about it, and the fact that this fall’s offering was in an area near a few programs I wanted to visit, it didn’t take a lot of convincing to get me to go.

After a day and a half of 20+ 25 minute meetings with program representatives, I can honestly say SC is a wonderful opportunity for seasoned IEC’s to complement the visits they do as members of IECA. I found the time flew by, and after every meeting I came away with a new idea/fact/nugget about each program. Many of the programs I had visited, and this time together gave us uninterrupted time to get caught up on new initiatives etc. As for the programs I hadn’t visited, or didn’t know, they were able to give me enough information to entice me to visit so I could make a true assessment after a site visit. O.K. I’ll admit it; it didn’t take a lot of convincing to get me to say I’ll visit the Hawaii programs!

As usual during my travels, I had a brutal schedule filled with meetings, clients, phone calls, etc from breakfast through dinner, and as usual I ended the trip with that odd mixture IEC’s often have of feeling simultaneously utterly exhausted and energized. I’ve only been back for 3 days, and I am already looking forward to meeting up with some new found friends at the IECA Conference in Dallas next month, and, oh, maybe I need to book that trip to Hawaii, I hear the rainy season is almost over!

Teamwork and the Independent Educational Consultant

2011-07-29T06:12:00.000-07:00

“Don’t worry Bar, most of them are small rapids. “

Small rapids…to me the expression small rapids is akin to jumbo shrimp; an oxymoron plain and simple.

So as I braced myself and plunged down river through the seemingly 12 foot walls of water, and 20 foot waterfalls (ok; an exaggeration I’ll admit, but still it was scary!) I realized, all too quickly, that my life, or at the very least my ability to walk without a significant limp, was in serious jeopardy.

I knew that this trip was a leap of faith; after all, I was putting my life in the hands of not only a guide who seemed to be younger than some of the t shirts I own but also a group of friends, some of whom I had known a grand total of 2 days, and others who had literally never whitewater rafted…yes, nervous is a good word to use…

As I did that day on the river, our families take a leap of faith when they retain us as IEC’s. Just as I wasn’t initially aware of my guide’s training, often times, through no fault of their own, our clients aren’t aware of the training and hard work that goes into a placement. Also, as I drifted down the river, I wasn’t aware that the rest of my team was going to be there for me at every turn, and we were going to work together to steer our way out of danger. Similarly, my families aren’t often aware of the team approach we use to help them through the difficult times, usually by the time families contact us at Loeta they are in dire straits, are seeking out answers, and are ready to work as a team; they just don’t know it…

So I learned a lot that day on the river; I gained a further appreciation for my clients and where they are coming from on an emotional level, I learned that teamwork isn’t just a phrase, but is a very important and real concept, and, pehaps most importantly, I learned that when a guide yells paddle right hard; she means it, lest you get very wet!

Advice for Parents of At-Risk Teens or Know What You Know...

2011-05-19T20:58:00.000-07:00

A while ago my check engine light came on.

“Uh, oh.” I thought.

You see, my trusty old Subaru, like its owner, isn’t the spring chicken it once was and is starting to show its age. Despite that, and the fact that to me the internal combustion engine is akin to magic, I decided I needed to open the hood and take a look. After a quick survey, I came to a realization; I had no idea what I was looking for.

I actually started to laugh at myself as I realized that me simply staring at the engine isn’t going to somehow magically fix it. Alas, I realized, time to accept what I don’t know and take the car to a mechanic.

Once I got home and thought about the events of the day, it got me thinking about a session I did at the last IECA meeting entitled “Know What You Know, Know What You Don’t Know”. With three IEC’s leading the discussion, it was a great session exploring an issue we as IEC’s often grapple with; that of wanting to serve as many families as we can countered with how we must remain true to our acquired specialty. There was some wonderful and lively debate, but all of us came to the same conclusion that we all need to, as the session title said, know what we know and know what we don’t.

The advice we were giving ourselves in that session is the same advice I often give my families. I feel that they, as parents, have a unique and important perspective and that information they have is crucial to me offering well-informed and pro-active choices for them to consider. Too often families come to me defeated, thinking that somehow that because they have a child with behavioral issues then they are a failure as a parent and that they should just give up. They have been beaten up so much, that they sometimes forget how much they know, and therefore how important they are. I always advise my families to share everything, and to take solace in knowing that if I can’t help them, I’ll make sure we get the experts who can.

I think a lot of my parents find it a relief that I don’t expect them to know everything; just to know what they know…

So my car…

Turns out it was the catalytic converter; but because I brought it to the right mechanic, he was able to get the repair covered under warranty, so not only did it pay off to go an expert, but to the right expert; but that’s a blog for another day…

You Are What You WUPHF; Or The Changing Face of Independent Educational Consulting

2011-03-28T14:21:00.000-07:00

Recently I was catching up on some shows I had recorded on my DVR, and I found myself involved in a 3 hour marathon of “The Office”. One episode which really stood out was last year’s season finale where Ryan developed a new social media mega-site called WUPHF. On WUPHF (pronounced Woof) you could link all of your contact information into one account so when you received one thing, say a fax, it would come through on all of your accounts. There is one great scene where Ryan is in his closet/office and everything starts ringing/buzzing and chirping at him at the same time… Of course typical of the show, they beat the joke into the ground (anyone who knows my family, knows why I love this humor so much) and by the end the WUPHF sounds completely ridiculous.

But is it?

Sure we don’t WUPHF, but if 15 years ago I had uttered this sentence; “Hey, got your RSS Feed, and I’m going to link it through to my Facebook and Twitter in a few; you mind if I blog about it too?” You most likely would have looked at me as quizzically as you would if I told you you’d be struggling with the decision of whether to get the iPad2 with or without the 3G capabilities. It’s true, what once seemed crazy is now normal.

In a similar vein, the field of Educational Consulting has grown in ways no-one could have imagined. While 15 years ago there were some incredible people doing amazing work, it was in many ways, a cottage industry. One was able, through hard work and word of mouth, to build and maintain a strong, profitable business. For good or bad, that is no more. The new normal is that there are now over 800 members of IECA , the majority of these new members go through a 5 day rigorous training session, the IECA Conferences now draw over 1,000 participants per conference on average and IEC’s, in general, are more trained and specialized than ever before. In addition, most IEC’s have websites, Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts and many Blog (which is an awesome verb by the way). And, most importantly for those of us who are IEC’s, more and more families are utilizing our services. Now please don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying all of this change is for the better; I feel that many of our more seasoned consultants can teach us all a thing or two about more traditional office practices, like phone calls, face to face time and word of mouth advertising, but this change is, for better or worse, normal.

At Loeta we look to these new ideas as opportunities, not only opportunities to present and promote Loeta Educational Consultants, but, more importantly, to promote the field of Educational Consulting. As members of today’s IECA, we are able to combine these new technologies, both within IECA and the schools themselves, with the more traditional aspects of school or program evaluation to assist us in developing not only a strong rapport with the schools, but also a stellar reputation as independent voices for our clients. There isn’t another profession which can lay claim to that fact.

Now we don’t have the hubris to think we know where all of this electronic media is going, but we do like the fact that IEC’s, partnering with IECA, are able to use these various social media tools, known and future, to spread the word of Educational Consulting as a profession. We look forward to that day when the first thing a family thinks of when they have a educational decision - whether it be for college, boarding school or wilderness therapy - will be to reach out to their neighborhood Independent Educational Consultant…

And who knows, maybe they’ll WUPHF us…

Learn about WUPHF here…

"Parenting Teens in the Age of Facebook" or "You Did WHAT Last Night?"

2011-01-31T09:51:00.000-08:00

This morning I was scrolling through my Facebook page and came across a poll which my daughter had filled out. It was pretty benign stuff really; whom she had texted last, who was her last “crush” etc. Actually many of her answers amused me, but reading it made me think about two things; how much I know about my 15 year old and how little my parents really knew about me as a 15 year old…

I KNOW I don’t know everything about my child; as a matter of fact I can honestly say I don’t want to know everything my daughter does, there are certain things a Dad just doesn’t need to know. But it did get me thinking about the amount of information we as parents and adolescents have today about each other as opposed to only one generation ago and how that has changed how parents and children look at each other.

With the exploding popularity of electronic connection and social media, it is even harder for parents to hold the line. We all know that many teens are connected seemingly 24/7, but what is really blurring the line is parental use of these same social outlets. Parents have their own Facebook pages, they text, they tweet, they post videos to YouTube. And, like kids, they often post things on the internet which they later regret. Parents are, for lack of a better word, more humanized than parents of previous generations. I didn’t know what my Dad did at his 25th high school reunion, but a quick glance of Facebook will tell you what countless 40 somethings were up to at theirs.

One thing that comes along with this more open virtual dialogue between adults and teens (because let’s face it, because of our voyeuristic tendencies many of us find ourselves reading these on line polls and questionnaires) is that we feel we as parents know what our kids are up to and they’ll tell us everything because we’re their friends.

We don’t and they won’t.

In my work as an Independent Educational Consultant, there are two rules I tell my families about, the first is the 80/20 rule. The 80/20 rule is pretty simple; parents think they know about 80% of what their children do, and they really know about 20%. Think about it for a minute, how much did your parents know? I know what you’re thinking; “But I’m his friend on Facebook.” or “She always texts me when she’s someplace safe.” The reality is that it is normal for teens to rebel; it’s a part of growing up and we are fooling ourselves if we feel our kids are any different.

The second rule is pretty simple also; we are parents first. Our kids have enough friends, they only have 2 parents. We must remember that our number one job is to be the parent, and that our decisions must be made as parents. We have to accept that we will sometimes be unpopular and that’s ok because it’s our job.

It’s not all doom and gloom, there is a lot of good that comes from this new openness between parents and children. I think that there is a strong upside to having parents more humanized; it shows that we too have our own struggles, conflicts and issues, and I feel quite strongly that the more children and parents openly dialogue the more we can have our children feel confident that they can come to us with issues and concerns.

But, as the old adage goes, take it all with a grain of salt.

By the way, in an earlier Facebook question my daughter talked about me being the “coolest Daddio in the whole world”

I bought it.

So yes; I am wrapped around her little finger, but i know it, so that makes it ok. Right?

Navigating blizzards with the aid of an Independent Educational Consultant

2010-12-29T07:20:00.000-08:00

For those of you who don’t follow CNN 24/7, or if you happen to live in a cave, you may not know that those of us in the Northeast got slammed with a pretty significant snowstorm last week. I know I heard reports of 30 inches way south (you know, like New Jersey) but up here in Maine we had a rather pedestrian 12 inches.

For about 24 hours during the height of the storm, I spent a lot of time getting updates from weather.com and CNN on both my computer and television, I kept reading and watching stories filled with doom and gloom; airports being shut down, people being stuck in their cars on the highways etc. In my fervor of following the storm that day, I switched from CNN to my local NBC affiliate. Honestly I had grown weary of the national news and wanted to see how the storm how the storm was going to affect us here in Mid-Coast Maine.

I have to admit, it had been a long time since I had watched the local news. I found it refreshing to watch a station which took the time to tell me not only what is going on in the country, but also in my town. The most heartening stories I watched that night were the ones which looked at the good side of the storm, they did a segment on the kids sledding, and a wonderful piece on a young man who chose to take the afternoon to help elderly neighbors get their walkways and driveway cleared of snow. Yes, they did the obligatory pieces on the serious aspects of the storm, but I was glad to see that they also made sure they did the more personal stories as well.

I like to think that at Loeta we deliver our services like the local news. We pride ourselves on our personal touch, and we make sure that every family we work with feels that they are important to us. We make sure that we are available to them at every point of the process, and we understand that they know we are there for them throughout. Like the local news we make sure the important pieces and logistics are taken care of, but we pride ourselves on our personal touch and our local flavor.

Just as we like to think of ourselves as the local news, many of our families feel that of their situations are analogous to a blizzard. They feel blinded by their teen’s decisions, that they as parents may lose power, that no matter how much they prepare something will go wrong and that the “snow” piles up pretty fast and deep. Often times the storm just keeps coming and coming and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.

But, as we know, blizzards always end. There is always that bright, sunny day afterwards when, if we prepared well, we can make it through the blizzard unscathed. We go sledding, we ski, we go for a brisk walk we learn to accept the snow, and make the best of it, and, despite our grumbling about the cold, we actually learn to enjoy it. So if our child is a blizzard, we need to prepare and get supplies. We also need to hold out, knowing that there will be that sunny day soon. And, well, we need to watch our local news!

Definition of an Independent Educational Consultant; according to a second grader…

2010-11-16T08:26:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you know that my daughters are often the central focus of my writings, and this month is no exception. A few years ago, during a second grade presentation on her parents, my younger daughter was asked what I did for a living; while I wasn’t there to hear, she reported back to me the next day.

“Well what did you say sweetie?” In my naiveté, I was ready for her to spout the intricacies and subtleties of life as an IEC (independent educational consultant)

“I told them you’re a consultant, an educational consultant.”

“That’s right, did you say anything else?” I eagerly responded.
“Um…well…” she stammered, trying to find the right words.

And then as if the light went off she recited, “I told them you tell parents where their kids should go camping to some field somewhere, oh and you talk to them on the phone a lot…”

My head dropped.

My daughter isn’t the only one who struggles understanding just what exactly it is that we do, whenever I travel outside the bubble of our conferences and the schools and programs we work with, I find myself having to explain the role of an IEC. At first, I confess, I would explain it almost apologetically. I, like many new consultants, didn’t have the confidence to understand that we are not only a very important cog in the machine but, in many cases, the most important one. We are the only ones out there meeting the programs on their own turf, getting to know the admissions directors, seeing the kids on campuses and really getting a pulse of what’s going on. It is our job to look beyond the shiny brochures and to find those diamonds in the rough. At Loeta we tout that we are a team, not only within the firm, but also with our families, the professionals involved with our clients, and, most importantly, the students we serve themselves. Everyone brings their expertise to the table, and we work it out together.

A larger, but equally important team I’m a member of is the Independent Educational Consultant Association (IECA). Being a member of IECA is one of the proudest accomplishments of my professional career. As a recently elected board member I have had the pleasure to participate more fully in the running of this organization, and have been exposed to a group of colleagues whom I really would never have any crossover with if I hadn’t joined the board. I am always amazed at not only the depth but also breadth of expertise and knowledge within this group. Certainly when you get a group of 850 Independent business owners together, not all will agree on every issue, but what is so wonderful about my colleagues at IECA is the fact that beneath it all we all have the same drive; to help families realize that there are choices out there, and we’re going give them unbiased advice and recommendations based on our professional judgment of the student’s needs and abilities.

My daughter is now in 6th grade, and while she can recite the states and their capitals, do mathematics which dumfound me and name the starting lineup of the Celtics; I’m still not sure she can really explain what I do…

And miles to go before I sleep…..

Remember the good old days back in 2010…

2010-10-20T19:18:00.000-07:00

Recently I got sucked into one of those TV infomercials trying to sell music from the 50’s. I was amused as the overly botoxed hosts told me that this music defined a generation. Come on, defined a generation? This is the stuff my parents listened to; therefore it can’t be that good. Smug I agree, but that’s what was going through my mind. I mean really, how could Pat Boone and The Everly Brothers define a generation?

After skimming through the channels some more, and almost buying a Mr. T Flavor Wave Oven (that’s a story for another day) I got to thinking; it’s hard for someone of my generation to believe, but yes, at one point Elvis was banned from television (well at least from the waist down) because of his pelvic gyrations and that there were many people who found him, Rock and Roll (when was Roll dropped anyway?) and this new concept of teenagers to be very scary stuff. Many adults of that time felt that this was going to be the downfall of America as they knew it, and that we as a society were doomed. Of course we all know we did make it through that time, and now we all look back at those concerns as, well, quaint really.

When I hear adults these days talk about all teens today are disrespectful, or their music has no soul, or things were different when they were kids, I have a hard time. Today most teens in America are exhibiting their natural rebellion; just as their parents and generations before them did against their parents, and, just like our parents didn’t get us, we don’t get them. Rebellion is a normal, and I would argue necessary, aspect of growing up. Where I feel parents get into trouble is when they don’t counter this rebellion with natural consequences, and as a result I feel many parents find themselves in a position where they can’t differentiate between normal behavior and accepted behavior.

At Loeta we preach that just because a behavior is accepted does not make it normal. It’s normal for a kid to experiment with alcohol and pot; it’s not normal for them to steal from their parents to pay for the habit. It’s normal for a teenage girl to roll her eyes at her father when he just doesn’t get her, it’s not normal for a child to let loose with a string of curses which would make a sailor blush when asked to take out the garbage.

Part of our role as Independent Educational Consultants is to work with families to try to differentiate between these normal and accepted behaviors. Most of the time by the time a family calls us they feel they are at their wit’s end. Honestly in our first interaction with families we end up doing a lot of listening, trying to determine where the family is emotionally and and we make sure that any decisions being made are proactive as opposed to reactive. In short we want to make sure that whatever recommendation we make is appropriate to the situation. In some cases we end up steering families back to their home therapists or school counselors because, quite honestly, things really aren’t that bad; their children are simply feeling their way through adolescence. When we do end up assisting them in finding appropriate residential settings, whether that mean a wilderness program, a residential treatment center or a boarding school, it is always done with care, and the best interest of the child in mind.

The issues facing families today are different than generations before, yes. But I’d argue that is true of every generation, and we’re doing our teens today a disservice if we either underplay or overplay these events or factors and don’t do our job as parents, stewards and guardians of the next generation of adults. Just remember these famous words said recently,

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

Ok, not that recently, those words are attributed to the Greek philosopher Socrates, but you get the idea. This issue of how to handle or deal with adolescents has perplexed adults for literally thousands of years, and will continue for thousands more. Someday our children will look back on the good old days of the 10’s as fondly as other generations look back on the 50’s 70 or the 80’s and wonder what’s wrong with their children. Until then, however, it is our job to guide them, educate them, discipline them and love them until their old enough to actually have that epiphany.

Wait, the 80’s, the era of E.T., Rubix cubes and Mr. T. That reminds me, time to go check my Flavor Wave, tonight I made a cheesecake!

Pick-up Trucks and iPods

2010-09-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I was out looking to buy a used truck, I thought it’d be good for towing my boat and for occasional trips to Home Depot or, more likely, the dump. My then 7 year old daughter loved riding in the trucks, so I used to take her with me to go for test drives. When we stepped into one particularly handsome Ford, I asked her to roll down the window; she looked quizzically at the hand crank attached to the door, back to me, and then proceeded to press the middle of the crank thinking it would magically open the window. After a few more attempts, she turned to me to announce the window was broken…

I was taken aback, but after a while I realized that she wasn’t being spoiled, rather it was simply the fact that she had never actually seen a hand crank window. Once I explained it to her, she actually thought it was fun to crank the window up and down, and soon thereafter I witnessed the odd juxtaposition of looking over at her cranking the window up and down, all the while listening to her iPod.

I shook my head…

At the most recent IECA (www.iecaonline.org) conference Executive Director Mark Sklarow presented a session on social media, and how it’s presently impacting, and will continue to impact, our profession. While I fully expected to see many of the newer consultants in the room, what was heartening to me was to see many of the more seasoned members of our profession join in. These more seasoned consultants obviously understood that while they have the traditional way of working with, and reaching out to, families down, they knew that times were changing. As I watched more and more seasoned professionals delve into the new social media in the weeks following the conference, I knew that the session was effective in its message. To me, however, what’s even more important than that is making sure that the newer consultants know that it’s a two way street. That we have a lot to learn from the more seasoned consultants about personal connection with their clients and that nothing can replace the human aspect of our profession.

At Loeta we certainly have embraced the internet and the new social media and have incorporated all of it heavily into our practice. We produce an e-newsletter, we are constantly expanding our presence on the internet through Facebook, this blog, Linkedin and our website, and, yes, we Tweet. Obviously we love the fact that we can keep people abreast of what’s going on through these various mediums but to us it’s important to make sure that this is balanced with the phone call to (or visit with) parents who are distraught about their teen’s choices or by spending some one on one time with a teen struggling with school or friends. We understand that we can reach thousands of people through the new social media, but if we don’t treat them with respect and dignity and can’t connect with then, it’s all for naught.

It’s all about balance; kind of like a hand crank window and an iPod.

New Perspectives….

2010-08-24T15:03:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of time reading, and honestly I really love it. However I have a confession; up until last Sunday, I had never purchased – therefore never read- the New York Times Sunday paper. But after about the 50th person referenced an article with the phrase, “Did you see the Times this week?” I decided I needed to. You see, being a good Boston boy I, of course, have always been partial to the hometown Globe, and had the impression that the Times was really simply New York’s version of our local paper. I mean, did I really want to read about the goings on in Queens, or an opening of an art exhibit in Manhattan? Or even worse be forced to read a complimentary article about the dreaded Yankees; which to me is a fate worse than death…

I’ll admit it, right here, right now; I was wrong. The New York Times Sunday Edition is really (despite what USA Today would say) the nation’s newspaper. Of course there is a New York slant, but I found myself reading article after article which had a global or national angle, and was amazed at both the depth and breadth of the paper.

Now this blog isn’t about you reading the Times (although I think you should buy it at least once) it’s about gaining a new perspective.

As an Educational Consultants I need to make sure that I am as up to date on the inner workings of residential programs as I can be, and I can’t rely on hearsay, conjecture and my own, sometimes dated, information. I need to make sure that I have the most accurate and up to date information available so that when I make a recommendation to a family, I feel confident that I’ve done all I can to present an accurate picture of what the program is and isn’t. I can get that information from a variety of sources; colleagues, clients, websites, staff, really anyone who has a connection. I read pro school sites, and the sites which want to shut down many of the schools I refer to, I read blogs and newsletters. Sometimes I read professional journals and realize that there are many people out there who are much smarter than me. Sure a lot of what I get will be biased (like some of the articles in the Times) but if I spread my sources out I will get an impartial and fair assessment of the programs I refer to. I don’t always agree with what I read, but I am always opening myself up to new ideas and perspectives, and I feel that is crucial to being effective at what I do.

So go ahead, read the Times; just stay away from the sports section if you’re a Boston fan….

2010-07-29T11:36:00.000-07:00

I was looking through some articles to gain inspiration for my blog this month, and after reading this article, I was truly intrigued by the angle the author took.
So many times when working with families, I come across parents who feel that somehow they have failed as parents if we need to look into residential care for their children. I like this article because it asks the difficult and often unasked questions, and that it doesn’t immediately assess blame for a toxic situation upon either the parent or the child. As I often tell families, this is a family issue, and everyone must do the work…

Accepting That Good Parents May Plant Bad Seeds
By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D.
Published: July 12, 2010

“I don’t know what I’ve done wrong,” the patient told me.
She was an intelligent and articulate woman in her early 40s who came to see me for depression and anxiety. In discussing the stresses she faced, it was clear that her teenage son had been front and center for many years.
When he was growing up, she explained, he fought frequently with other children, had few close friends, and had a reputation for being mean. She always hoped he would change, but now that he was almost 17, she had a sinking feeling.
I asked her what she meant by mean. “I hate to admit it, but he is unkind and unsympathetic to people,” she said, as I recall. He was rude and defiant at home, and often verbally abusive to family members.
Along the way, she had him evaluated by many child psychiatrists, with several extensive neuropsychological tests. The results were always the same: he tested in the intellectually superior range, with no evidence of any learning disability or mental illness. Naturally, she wondered if she and her husband were somehow remiss as parents.
Here, it seems, they did not fare as well as their son under psychiatric scrutiny. One therapist noted that they were not entirely consistent around their son, especially when it came to discipline; she was generally more permissive than her husband. Another therapist suggested that the father was not around enough and hinted that he was not a strong role model for his son.
But there was one small problem with these explanations: this supposedly suboptimal couple had managed to raise two other well-adjusted and perfectly nice boys. How could they have pulled that off if they were such bad parents?
To be sure, they had a fundamentally different relationship with their difficult child. My patient would be the first to admit that she was often angry with him, something she rarely experienced with his brothers.
But that left open a fundamental question: If the young man did not suffer from any demonstrable psychiatric disorder, just what was his problem?
My answer may sound heretical, coming from a psychiatrist. After all, our bent is to see misbehavior as psychopathology that needs treatment; there is no such thing as a bad person, just a sick one.
But maybe this young man was just not a nice person.
For years, mental health professionals were trained to see children as mere products of their environment who were intrinsically good until influenced otherwise; where there is chronic bad behavior, there must be a bad parent behind it.
But while I do not mean to let bad parents off the hook — sadly, there are all too many of them, from malignant to merely apathetic — the fact remains that perfectly decent parents can produce toxic children.
When I say “toxic,” I don’t mean psychopathic — those children who blossom into petty criminals, killers and everything in between. Much has been written about psychopaths in the scientific literature, including their frequent histories of childhood abuse, their early penchant for violating rules and their cruelty toward peers and animals. There are even some interesting stories suggesting that such antisocial behavior can be modified with parental coaching.
But there is little, if anything, in peer-reviewed journals about the paradox of good parents with toxic children.
Another patient told me about his son, now 35, who despite his many advantages was short-tempered and rude to his parents — refusing to return their phone calls and e-mail, even when his mother was gravely ill.
“We have racked our brains trying to figure why our son treats us this way,” he told me. “We don’t know what we did to deserve this.”
Apparently very little, as far as I could tell.
We marvel at the resilient child who survives the most toxic parents and home environment and goes on to a life of success. Yet the converse — the notion that some children might be the bad seeds of more or less decent parents — is hard to take.
It goes against the grain not just because it seems like such a grim and pessimistic judgment, but because it violates a prevailing social belief that people have a nearly limitless potential for change and self-improvement. After all, we are the culture of Baby Einstein, the video product that promised — and spectacularly failed — to make geniuses of all our infants.
Not everyone is going to turn out to be brilliant — any more than everyone will turn out nice and loving. And that is not necessarily because of parental failure or an impoverished environment. It is because everyday character traits, like all human behavior, have hard-wired and genetic components that cannot be molded entirely by the best environment, let alone the best psychotherapists.
“The central pitch of any child psychiatrist now is that the illness is often in the child and that the family responses may aggravate the scene but not wholly create it,” said my colleague Dr. Theodore Shapiro, a child psychiatrist at Weill Cornell Medical College. “The era of ‘there are no bad children, only bad parents’ is gone.”
I recall one patient who told me that she had given up trying to have a relationship with her 24-year-old daughter, whose relentless criticism she could no longer bear. “I still love and miss her,” she said sadly. “But I really don’t like her.”
For better or worse, parents have limited power to influence their children. That is why they should not be so fast to take all the blame — or credit — for everything that their children become.
Dr. Richard A. Friedman is a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan.

.

On The Road...

2010-02-26T15:16:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the life of an educational consultant is like the Willie Nelson classic, “On the Road Again” When one figures I’ve been to 200 schools and programs over the last 5 years (a good number of the twice, or even three times), 25 IECA and 10 NATSAP National conferences, countless lunches, one day meetings or outings with colleagues and who knows how many trips to see clients at programs or schools, I am shocked that they don’t simply roll out the red carpet for me at the airport, or at the very least always reserve an exit row seat for me! Granted many of the travels I go on are to wonderful and beautiful places; I rarely complain when my travels bring me to the Wasatch mountains of Utah in winter (funny how I always time it that way) or to the beautiful Arizona desert in March, and I’ll confess I’m often looking for an excuse to travel to the southeast in late fall.

Visiting programs is a crucial part of what we do as consultants. Not only do we need to do program visits to keep up our membership in IECA, but we also tour for professional development reasons. So yes, we have to tour, but for many of us touring is an exciting and fulfilling part of our job. Most of us work in small offices, or alone, so visiting programs allows us to get out and see what exciting things our colleagues are doing at their programs. It is important for us to get our hands dirty as it were, so yes, we ride the horses, bust the fire, and even, occasionally, muck the stalls. It is imperative that we roll up our sleeves and get to know not only the staff but also the students at these programs; because when we refer our clients to them, many times it’s because we know the people and we can, for lack of a better word, see our kid at the school. Of course we need to do our due diligence when it comes to reviewing testing, speaking to therapists, parents and other professionals, etc. but we cannot lose sight that many times our gut tells us if a place is a good match or not, and, well, you can’t rely on your gut if you’ve never been there!

So for us, often times it is indeed life on the road, and for many of us, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Do you know the signs?

2009-10-20T15:28:00.000-07:00

If your son’s friend comes to your door wearing a hat with FML emblazoned on it, do you know what that means? Are you aware of what your teenage daughter is saying to the world when she goes out in a t-shirt which has the numbers 187 on it? What if your son comes home talking about his friend, the Emo? Does this mean anything to you? When you overhear your teenager talking about a pharm party or special K, do you think they are talking about the petting zoo and breakfast cereal?

All of these phrases, logos and expressions have very specific meanings to our teens, and while they may sound foreign and even a little silly to us; to our adolescents they are real, and can be very scary.

I don’t want you to think that if you hear of one these expressions or see one these logos your child is running in a gang, or is on drugs. But I do want you to look at them for what they are; clues, or signs as it were, that we should pay extra attention. We as adults must be informed as to what’s on the street, what the drugs are, what the lingo is so that we can have a fighting chance.

It’s scary not knowing what is going on; we feel powerless as adults. We want to feel that our children can talk to us about anything, but we know, deep in our hearts that they aren’t; just think back, did your parents know what you were doing at 16?

So get informed! Learn what the drugs are (www.streetdrugs.org), what the lingo is (www.noslang.com), and be proactive. Yes, you may make a mistake, maybe even over react and risk having your adolescent mad at you, but an angry teen is a lot better than the alternative.

5th Annual PDW in Park City

2009-10-11T07:19:00.000-07:00

I just got back from spending 3 days in beautiful (and surprisingly cold) Park City, UT where I joined 80 other consultants, therapists and clinicians for meals, workshops, social time and presentations. This year the folks at Aspen did things differently, and they joined the "speed dating" phenomenon and gave us each 20 minutes to sit with clinicians, executive directors and line staff to learn what's new at their programs. By no means did these 20 minute "dates" take the place of a full visit, but I found them a great way to catch up with what's new at the 6 programs I spent time with.

In addition to the speed dating there were some great sessions. I attended a 3 hour, two part session about trends in drug use among teens and young adults which was very educational, and a quite scary. The session was presented by two police officers/school compliance officers, so it was some real frontline stuff.

Michele Borba gave us a 2 hour presentation on parenting which was excellent and I don’t think there was a truly dry eye in the house when Erik Wahl gave his closing keynote, on using inspiration to overcoming mediocrity which combined inspirational speaking, discussion of left brain vs. right brain, painting and laughter; hard to describe, but really amazing stuff.
Later in the week I’m going to be adding links to my site not only for the sessions I went to last week, but also some others which I think everyone would find interesting.

Until next time,

Bar