A Mom and Me–facing up to the runaway problem at a theraputic boarding school

January 30, 2009

Image by Joseph Hoetzl via Flickr It’s an early spring day in 2003.  Tom, the shift supervisor at the school (we call them the Senior Floor Person or just, “senior floor”) calls me. “Amy Nusman just called. She’s driving up with her boyfriend to look for Chris.” Christopher Nusman is 16.  He left the school [...]

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Pathological learning

January 30, 2009

My dog Ripley is addicted to a large blue plastic ball.  Too large to pick up, she will push is around with her nose until her nose is bloody and swollen and she is exhausted. When you first see this, it’s funny.  As it goes on it becomes disturbing. I let her have the ball [...]

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The Second Coldest Day of the Year

January 18, 2009

Image by diathesis via Flickr “What sort of knucklehead runs away on the coldest day of the year?”  I said to no one in particular when I got the call at 10 AM.  Two boys had taken off from the chapel and were heading north west thought the woods. It was a rhetorical question.  I [...]

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Influence

January 5, 2009

Image by hangdog via Flickr If you write or teach you sometimes have to go for quite a long stretch without much feedback–good or bad–about your work.  You hope that you are having impact, that you are an influencer, but it can be hard to tell. Today, I walked into the classroom where I teach [...]

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Understand Randomness and Avoid Pointless Change Efforts

January 5, 2009

Image by hyperscholar via Flickr (This is the second of three parts on regression toward the mean.) If you don’t understand randomness, you can have a hard time telling a real problem from chance fluctuations. This is especially true when it comes to tests of any kind. Your grade on any test is a combination [...]

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Why common sense is nonsense

December 24, 2008

I’ve been reading The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow.  No, no, don’t click away yet.  The ideas in this book are important.  For anyone who has ever tried to change herself, or to teach something to somebody else, the most important is on page 9. Its called “regression toward the [...]

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Triggers

December 18, 2008

Image by shelms via Flickr People sometimes ask me why some teens need residential treatment.  It seems extreme to separate a teenager from friends, family and community for one or two years (the average length of most therapeutic boarding school programs).  There are lots of reasons and I will write more about them later. But [...]

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Playing to Strength

December 10, 2008

Intense teens work with Search and Rescue Dogs Troubled teens, at-risk teens, difficult children, juvenile delinquents, angry and defiant kids. No matter the term, parents send their children to us at The Family Foundation School after they have tried therapy, medication, alternative schools, more discipline, less discipline, you name it.  Every semester between 15 and [...]

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