OT: Need ideas for coworker with troubled youth. Options

[Qarl]

I have a coworker that has a troubled youth.

Her son, now 13, was formerly a straight-A student, had great friends and was a nice young man. This was two years ago.

About that time, his best friend was murdered. In the same time frame, he was in two car accidents (one in which he lost one of his fingers). Ever since, he's been angry at the world, lashing out, rebelling, and getting continually out of control.

He now is getting involved with drugs, crime, hanging out with older kids and adults, failing in school, disrespecting his parents and generally being a bad kid. He skips school, escapes out the bedroom window at midnight, lies and steals

His parents are in a low-income household. THey work hard to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. His mother has tried the counselors at school (she says the really have nothing to offer), they've tried anger management, outside counseling, etc.

They are at their wits end and the mother says that she's losing her baby.

She is looking to me for ideas on how to get help for her child. Her problem is she can't afford much, if at all. Government funding, state funding... anything would help.

I've asked if he has any interests, and she says none that are good. She goes to church, but he has no interest in attending youth programs or getting involved in Scouting.

She'd love some sort of boot camp, boys ranch, boarding school, or scare-straight type program... but she can't afford anything.

Any and all ideas are appreciated.

Thanks,

Karl

[cooltimes]

In the event that anyone listens to what experience of hardknocks has shown others.

When you isolate, you will can instill a few good traits but when you roll the rebel child back into the public streets, where people point out anything they do and call it bad, even though guided by a guardian tutor, the hands again become fists.

Changing one person is not really going to change the long term problem. It's the public that this kid resents because he sees it as a stonewall that denies him his terms of choosing authority based on his own ideals. Not others.

Everyone, young or old want to be in charge of their own emotions without someone telling him that he is wrong every moment. Nobody wants that. You have to involve the young people where they make their own decisions, not someone else calling all the shots, right or wrong, but all in accordance to their own logic of how they fit into the whole plan of the social life we call society.

The only way the kids will change is when we all change from being judges of others.
It's very prevalent, the few who judge who is only important to them even in a small group like this 914 group. Don't expect change to suit you alone. Change to be suitable to all. Become a friend to all that you don't try to understand and the problem won't exist.