Residential Treatment - Our Long Journey
By Guest Writer Beverly Hall. Please feel free to ask Beverly questions on our forum.The events leading up to Residential Treatment - page 2
My daughter's double life consisted of standing up in front of the youth at church and singing songs that glorified God, then going to school and living like the devil. Eventually many of the kids in the church who went to her high school confronted our youth pastor about this, and eventually my daughter was asked step-down from being on the praise singers the church. The youth pastor called me and talked to me about it I told them that if they asked her to step-down, that would push her further into the negative behavior. It eventually got to the point where they had to make her step-down because of the things she was doing in school. I imagine it was very difficult for her to live this double life. On Sunday she would go to church with me and sit there and draw during the whole sermon then come home and act belligerent. We actually had arguments coming home from church.
As I said, she had a whole set of friends I did not know about. I always thought it was odd when she would talk about these people and I would ask to introduce them to me. She would make excuses for that. And yet I knew that these kids were negative influence on her.
During the summer between her freshman and the beginning of her sophomore year of high school, she decided she wanted to go to the youth church camp. I was quite shocked that she asked to go. I thought this would be good for her and perhaps turn her life around. When she came back from youth camp she was all excited about all the fun things that she did. She came home and told me about how she felt closer to God, and she began to tell me of all these new things that she was going to do before school started, that would help her do better in her sophomore year. I trusted her. I believed her. And most of all my faith in God is what kept me going.
The beginning of her sophomore year of high school started out good. I believe she had good intentions on making good grades and doing her homework. Since she had failed algebra 1, she had to repeat it in the first semester of her sophomore year. This was even after taking her to sylvan learning centers for tutoring in her freshman year. So, of course the first few weeks of her sophomore year went well. Little did I know that she was hanging around some of the same kids that had been influencing her as a freshman.
Later in September of that year, we had to drive to Texas because my father was in the hospital. Thankfully he was okay but my daughter was upset that her grandpa was sick. When we got home from Texas, each and every day was filled with arguments and discussions about who she was hanging around with. She would not introduce them to me, and of course I only assumed the worse.
One thing that I would caution parents of teenagers is this, trust your gut feeling.
In October of her sophomore year I discovered that she was going with a boy who was a senior. Seniors were off-limits and she knew it. I discovered that she was going with this boy through an e-mail that she had sent to one of her friends. I don't think any parent enjoys having to snoop and look at what their teen is writing or doing, but sometimes you just have to do it when your gut is telling you something is wrong.
I talked to my daughter's therapist about it when my daughter went to see her; she convinced her therapist that there was nothing going on between her and this boy. I also enlisted the help of our pastor of our church to try to help talk to her about what was going on in her life. Those few sessions did not do any good.
I noticed that my daughter was listening to music that had very explicit lyrics. She knew I would not approve of this music and she still brought it into the house. I tried everything. We even tried talking with her therapist as a family and draw up some type of contract to follow certain rules in the home. I was willing to compromise. I couldn’t even discuss this with her. She had a deep anger that came out as intense hatred for me. I did not understand where this anger and hatred came from. It was around this time that I noticed my daughter was depressed. She was acting differently. I knew that her choice of friends had changed, her choices of music changed, and her whole personality changed. She would go for long walks. But she would never talk to me about was going on her mind.
One day, I went upstairs and saw on a mirror a poem written with a dry erase marker. I called it a death poem. It talked about suicide; it talked about wanting to be gone from this world. Frantically I called her therapist and read her the poem. When my daughter came home the next day from school, I was there to ask her about it. She claimed the poem was something she copied from a book she borrowed from me. That was far from the truth. After we talked, she walked out in anger.
You see, she used to justify her walking out by getting angry with me. She also knew she could push my buttons and make me angry which would justify her leaving. I tried really hard not to let her push my buttons but it was so hard. That day when we talked briefly about the poem, she left. As the hours passed by she did not return. I called those friends that I knew she hung around with but nobody could give me answers.
Parents, it is so important to know who your teens are hanging around with. Get their names, get their phone numbers, meet the parents. By 11 PM, my daughter had still not come home. Frantically, I drove to the police station to report a missing child. I told them about the poem that she wrote and I told him I was worried she might try to kill herself. The police asked me if I knew where she might be. From what one of her friends told me on the phone earlier I figured she could be at this one boy's house that was in the country. I had no idea how to get there. I left the police knowing that she could be there and asked them if they could go there and check it out. They told me it was out of their jurisdiction. I was a single parent all alone, wondering where my daughter was and there wasn’t anything I could do.
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