Monarch School in Winter

The kids may not want to be there, but the school and its setting ARE beautiful. Here are photos I took during my last visit.

 

 

A Whole Lot of Nothin'

What do you do for a whole weekend when you visit your child at Monarch School? The kids are not allowed off campus for the first couple of visits and the usual go-to forms of entertainment (like watching TV, listening to your ipod or surfing the net) are not an option at Monarch. So what do you do?

You slow WAY down. You actually talk to your child. You play board games. You walk around. You visit the horse barn. You hang out. The whole point is to be present in the moment, not planning for the future or rehashing the past. To have open and meaningful conversations about what you are thinking and feeling. One of the things Josh wanted to hear more about was his Dad's childhood, including some of his formative experiences and how they affected him. So they spent quite awhile talking about that. They also played team chess with another boy and his dad. Chess seems to be a big thing at Monarch. Katie and I spent a lot of time talking to and patting the horses. She was so dying to ride, but the riding instructor snt there on the weekends.

We actually had a parent workshop on Friday afternoon, where we did some experiential work around our "patterns" (the behaviors we tend fall back on repeatedly to deal with problems or situations...in this context we are talking about our less effective behaviors) and found this to be eye-opening and also a helpful way to get into the appropriate frame of mind for the weekend.

The kids have classes for their electives on Saturday mornings, so we got to see Josh's improv class run through the rehearsal for the show they were going to be doing for the school the following week. It was great fun and the kids clearly enjoyed it.

One of the most moving things is participating in "last light" with your child on Saturday night. They have last light every night and usually it's fairly short. But the weekend we were there conincided with the graduation of a group of kids, and the last light included some music interspersed graduates and their parents taking turns talking about their experience at Monarch, what it has meant for them and what they are grateful for. It's a pretty emotional event for them and even for us newbies.

Our First Parent Visit to Monarch - Disclosures

It's been a while since my last post. I guess I just needed to take a break from the relentlessness of thinking and worrying constantly about Josh. After three months we were finally able to go out to our first parent visit. It was postponed because about a third of the students came down with the flu in early November and were quarantined to try and keep it from spreading. Josh had the flu as well as pneumonia.

One of the objectives of the first visit is for the child to give his "disclosures". This is where the child tells you everything they have done that they are not proud of, and the parent's job is to just listen while they put it all out there. It's cathartic for the child to be able to say these things, some of which the parents may not have heard or know about and some of which may be shocking to them. The child obviously dreads doing this but also feels a huge weight lifted off of them once they have done it, particularly if the parents can listen without judgment. It is the first step toward repairing a parent-child relationship that has gone wrong.

We were also terrified of what we might hear. But in our case, the disclosures were not as shocking as they are for some parents. Since WOW is Josh's drug of choice, we did not have to hear about the drugs, sex and violence that many parents do. We were aware of most of Josh's transgressions, at least in a broad sense, and the worst that we heard was about lying,  unauthorized use of our credit cards and stealing small amounts of cash from our wallets.

Strangely, the very act of doing the disclosure has the effect of drawing parents and child together, as you are able (metaphorically) to set aside that baggage and get one with doing your work in pursuit of a healthier relationship.

Dreaming of Josh

Even though Josh has been away at school for a month now, I still think about him constantly throughout the day. In the middle of whatever I am doing I will stop and wonder what he is doing at that moment. Is he is in class? Having lunch? Or just hanging out with the other kids? I also dream about him. Last night I had one that was a new twist on the old final exam dream (the one where you realize you have an exam for a course that you've never attended and haven't read the book...and furthermore you can't seem to find out where the exam is being held). In the new version of the dream I have gone to Monarch School for parents' weekend. There seems to be construction going on all around the campus so it's hard to make your way from one building to another. Kids and parents are going from one activity to the next but I can't seem to find Josh anywhere. Finally, at the very end of the weekend I do find him, just in time to give him a big hug before I have to leave. I wonder what it means...am I afraid I won't be able to connect with him when I see him again? Will he have changed so much I won't really know him anymore? I wonder if other parents in my situation have similar dreams.

First Letter Home

After a two week wait we get our first letters from Josh. I am relieved that he seems pretty positive and upbeat. He misses home and his computer, but otherwise doesn't complain. In fact, he says school is way better than Wilderness. While this all seems good, the school has cautioned that it may not be as positive as it appears on the surface. They actually want the kids to act out and display their maladaptive behaviors so the staff can see first hand what the issues are and go to work addressing them. Apparently, many kids arriving at school start out very compliant, intent on "doing their time" and staying under the radar until they can come home. What generally happens with these kids is that they can't keep up the good behavior and, at some point, have a big meltdown. The staff would prefer that they get this out of their systems sooner rather than later because, until they do, they can't begin their "work".

Why Some Kids Get Addicted to WoW

When Josh was at Wilderness the therapist did an exercise with the boys to help them better understand the underlying reasons for their various addictions. He explained that there are a few basic emotional needs that all people have. Different psychologists have somewhat different names for these needs, but they are: need for control/autonomy, need for security/safety, need for community/acceptance/sense of belonging, need for competence/achievement and need for affection/warmth/love.

He explained that if people cannot meet one or more of these needs in the usual way, they will often turn to some form of addiction that seems to fill or dull this need. Then he went around the group and asked each boy which need he felt his particular addiction was filling. A couple of the boys said that they had originally started doing drugs as a way to gain acceptance into a "cool" group of kids that did not accept their "straight" selves. Others said their addiction fed their need for control, autonomy or freedom. When it was Josh's turn he thought for a minute and said, "All of them. World of Warcraft meets all of my needs."

When the therapist told me this story, I had a real epiphany. Suddenly I could understand why this game had such a powerful hold over my son. In the virtual world he could be the person he wanted to be but couldn't be in the real world. He was a member of a guild that accepted him, but at the same time his anonymity provided a sense of safety and security. He could create and control his characters and feel a sense of achievement as he completed quests and leveled up. He was admired for his skill and relied upon to help his guild-mates. It became painfully clear that this was not going to be an easy addiction to break.

How to tell if your teen is addicted to WoW

I know lots of kids who play WoW. Many of Josh's friends play WoW, but most of them are not addicted. They play recreationally and they enjoy it. But they do not play it to the exclusion of everything else. They do well in school and they have other interests.

Here are some of the ways I knew that WoW was not just casual entertainment for Josh:
- Over time, he quit doing extracurricular activities like soccer, fencing and basketball.
- He quit playing guitar, saying it was boring to practice and he wasn't any good at it.
- He would spend hours playing WoW and not even realize how much time had gone by.
- He skipped dinner in order to go on raids, saying he didn't want to let his guild down.
- He started staying in to play rather than going out with friends.
- His grades got worse and worse. He forgot to do or hand in homework. He ultimately failed some classes.
- He started falling asleep in class.
- He got neck aches and backaches.
- He was irritable unless he was playing.
- He started neglecting basic personal hygiene and had to be reminded to take a shower or brush his teeth.
- He snuck down to the basement to play at night after we were asleep.
- He used my credit cards without authorization., so he could switch servers or transfer characters to other accounts that we didn't know about.
- He refused accept any restriction of his gaming and used all of his energy fighting with us
about it.

If you are noticing similar patterns in your child, don't wait. Take action. It only gets harder the more entrenched they get.