On June 29th, we had our monthly bonus activity – the one we have when none of the students have acted out. After several different activities were thrown on the table we decided on playing softball. The admissions team, mentors and students went over to Moroni to the soft ball fields. When everyone arrived at the fields we all lined up and counted off to divide into teams. It was kind of crazy at first, I think several of us forgot how to catch, throw a ball and even hit. After a couple innings everyone started getting the hang of the game. It was so much fun watching the different personalities come out in the students and even the staff. It was just a relaxing day with no pressure and no worrying about something important to get done. It was a day just to enjoy each others company and have a good laugh. We played about 9 innings then decided that we had played enough. After it was over we went back to Oxbow where Charlotte had prepared a BBQ lunch for everyone. We had hamburgers or hot dogs, salads, chips, fruit and dessert. It was YUMMY!!!! Overall, it was a very fun filled day. By Bill Pollock, Residential Director
Posts Tagged ‘sexual dependency’
Troubled Teens Play Ball!
Wednesday, July 20th, 2011It’s Not Too Late
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010I went to Oxbow Academy today to shoot *equine imprinting. It’s a fancy term for the simple process of handling a new baby horse while it is only days old in order to help the horse feel comfortable with human touch. The theory goes that if the little one is used to having his ears rubbed, hooves examined, and face stroked he won’t be frightened when it comes time to wear a halter or be treated by a vet. Horse professionals say the animal won’t run from humans entering the corral. Instead, he’ll greet them. Sounded good to me. But what does this kind of horse theory have to do with teen boys who have been victims of sexual abuse, many of whom have, in turn, touched others inappropriately. How does this help them?
Brita and Tony North, the horse pros at Oxbow let me watch and find out. One at a time the boys enter the corral and slowly approach the mother, who is halter-held by Brita. Tony has his arms around the wobbly baby. Tony, the mother and baby, and the Oxbow student are all almost nose-to-nose as the boy tentatively pats first the mare and then slowly moves to her baby.
Stroking the tiny horse’s velvet nose, then running hands down its neck, softly tickling its belly, and slowly lifting the spindly legs to tap tiny hooves.
Brita is softly talking to the boys, explaining the mare must trust that they will not hurt her baby. Their movements must be slow and careful. If alarmed, she will do whatever she must to protect her foal.
In each boy the reaction is different. Some seem stone faced and unimpressed. Those are often the newest students to arrive at Oxbow. Others are filled with wonder at the foal’s fragile little body. Most ask for a second chance to stroke the little horse again.
Now Brita explains to the boys that as prey animals, it is ultimate act of trust for the mare to allow them close to her baby. And for the baby to allow the boys to temporarily disable it by lifting its legs is the essence of vulnerability. There is no chance to run or escape in that condition.
She asks the boys, “Are you giving your therapist a leg?” An odd question, but one they immediately relate to. Are you being honest? Have you disclosed everything from your past so your healing present can begin? Are you sincere in your work and willingness to turn the horror of your past into the hope of your future?
Brita tells the boys the night the foal was born she went to the corral every two hours to help the mare learn to nurse her baby. Her udder was swollen and sore and the nursing process was painful for the first few tries. Gradually, the swelling subsided and the thristy baby could nurse completely.
She asked the boys, “Do you think it is painful for your parents to help you deal with your sexual issues?” The boys share the reactions of their parents, particularly their mothers, when they disclosed sexual behaviors. “Your parents,” Brita tells them, “are standing by you. It is difficult for them but they are determined to give you the tools you need to succeed.” Her voice drops a notch. “That’s why you’re here,” she says, gently, giving each of them a long look.
Brita continues, “All of you should have had someone to give you appropriate touch the moment you were born. Some of you didn’t. For some of you, that trust was betrayed. Does that mean it’s too late for you?”
Almost in unison the boys shake their heads no. But one student asks, “If the mom didn’t learn imprinting will she turn on her baby? Will she reject her baby?” His question is loaded with concern.
“Will it matter what she does,” Brita responds, “if her baby learns the tools he needs to behave appropriately?”
The boys think about this in silence for a while. Another student asks, “How long do most horses live?” The intention is clear. What he really wants to know is how long does a foal that hasn’t been imprinted have to “get it,” to re-learn the fearlessness of positive touch?
Brita’s answer is simple. “Not nearly as long as you will. You can take these tools and create a happy, safe life.”
Almost on cue the little foal skitters away and the mare moves to a protective stance between baby and boys. Lesson over.
*Visit the video section of our website to see how equine imprinting works.
The Big Lie
Monday, August 2nd, 2010My email was practically smoking. As I read, I could feel the fury and frustration of the mother who wrote it. She had been watching an episode of a popular daytime TV talk show and was disgusted at the way they portrayed teens who struggle with pornography and other sexual dependencies. Somebody needs to tell people what’s really going on, she exclaimed. Nobody out there really knows what it’s like. Therapists that should know how to help don’t recognize the signs. Parents don’t know where to turn for answers. This mother should know. She’s been through it all with her son. The endless list of mis-diagnoses that left her child in a continual cycle of anger and acting out. By a stroke of what she considers divine intervention, her family found Oxbow. Her son has finished therapy and is living successfully on his own. But that’s not enough for this mother. She knows the pain of wondering where to turn – wondering if her boy could ever be whole and be healed. So she has taken her anger and her experience in hand. She’s writing a book about her family’s journey. And she’s working on a video documentary chronicaling her experiences. “I have to do something,” she told me. And she is. She’s stepping out of the shadows to help other children and parents. “If I can help just one other child, one other family, it’s worth it.”
Teens and Pornography
Friday, July 2nd, 2010A recent Tweet about the value of computer pornography blocking software reminded me of this article. I wrote it a couple of years ago for a counseling magazine but it’s message is even more timely today.
Teens and Pornography: The Frightening New Addition
*Names have been changed to protect privacy.
Looking back, *Tom remembers the morning the nightmare began. It was 5:30 a.m. Summer vacation meant his 15-year-old son, *Jason, should be sleeping in. Instead, Tom was surprised to find him at the family computer. He was even more stunned when he saw what his son was doing.
“He was looking at porn,” Tom says. Specifically, Jason was watching child pornography. “It was about as hard-core as you could get.”
Jason was ashamed and embarrassed and promised his parents he would never do it again. They thought their son was “just curious” and believed him. The family had recently moved and the computer’s filtering system was down. Tom installed a new blocking program and made sure it was working.
They were devastated when they discovered their son, on at least two other occasions, had hacked through the system to find porn.
In the meantime, Jason was spiraling downward at school. Formerly a straight A student, the teen began failing his accelerated classes.
“We suspected drug use,” Tom recalls. They began drug testing their son and carefully monitoring his behavior and friends. Every drug test turned up negative.
“He proceeded to get worse until it reached a point where we couldn’t get him to do anything at home. He wouldn’t even take a shower, brush his teeth or get ready for school,” Tom remembers.
Desperate for help, the family turned to their church and was eventually referred to a counselor who specialized in adolescent therapy.
After months of therapy Jason revealed he had been looking at Internet porn for at least two years. He had tried to do it in secret at home or at a friend’s house. But the “secret” had transformed to a demon that was controlling his life.
Shawn Brooks is Executive Director of Oxbow Academy, a residential treatment center, or RTC, that specializes in treating teenage boys with sexual dependencies. A sexual dependency is a behavior that interferes with a child’s normal behavior or coping ability.
Located in rural Wales, Utah, Oxbow is one of only a handful of centers that focuses exclusively on adolescent sexual dependencies. Pornography is the common thread.
“Most parents don’t find out their kids are looking at Internet pornography unless they are able to track their use on the computer,:” he says. “If parents are watching their child’s behavior they may start picking up other cues.”
Brooks says those cues can include strange behavior regarding the Internet, such as becoming agitated it a parent enters the room while they are on the Net. Some parents report their teens stay up all night to use the computer, making the child unusually tired or irritated. Other times, behavioral issues like Jason’s may appear.
Dr. Thomas Kimball is Associate Professor and Associate Managing Director for the Center for the Study of Addiction and Recovery at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. He believes in some teens, viewing pornography can be as addictive as drugs.
“Behaviors can be just as addictive as substances,” he says. “There’s an experimentation phase, then abusing, depending, and addicting,” Kimball says.
Brooks agrees. “Sexual addictions are similar to drug addictions. Not everybody reacts the same,” he explains. “When a male adolescent sees pornography it releases endorphins similar to heroin.”
Brooks says just like with drugs, pornography that satisfies the user today will eventually lose its potency – requiring the addict to go for something bigger and better.
Dr. Kimball adds, “As a clinician, the biggest increase in private practice and couples therapy are couples coming in because one of them is entrenched in porn. The impact on marriages and families is immense, and it starts when people are teens.”
Statistics show most children have their first experience with Internet pornography at age 11 – usually by accident.
Jason’s Internet search stemmed from an innocent experience he had as a five-year-old with a peer. Tom says his son was not molested – the children were simply too young to know that what felt good was inappropriate. At the time, he didn’t even know the incident had occurred. His son revealed the experience during therapy.
When Jason grew older and realized his behavior was wrong he felt a tremendous amount of shame and guilt from the incident and used the Internet as a way to at first try to understand his behavior, then to feed his fantasy.
“The Internet is the number one feeder of porn addiction,” Shawn Brooks says. “Whatever your fantasy is you can find it. There is so much stimulus to support it.”
Brooks says the Internet is an especially dangerous pornography source because of the number and variety of images. “An adolescent could spend a year and never see the same picture twice,” he says. He’s aware of cases where teens actually become dehydrated because they are “glued” to the computer screen for hours.
Tom says when he and his wife learned of Jason’s experience and his Internet pornography addiction, “We really fell apart. That’s when we knew we had a crisis.”
Looking for Help
The family began looking for treatment programs that could help Jason with his addiction. “We learned there are lots of options for drug and alcohol treatments but not for sexual addictions.” The programs Tom did find did not treat adolescents.
The Internet that proved a feeding ground for their son’s addiction now became a lifeline in helping him overcome it. “We did a lot of research trying to place Jason in a program,” Tom says.
Specialized Therapy
Acting on the recommendation of the educational consultant, Jason moved to an RTC which did not specialize in sexual dependencies. Instead, students were suffering from a variety of substance abuse and mental health problems.
After five months in the program, Jason felt comfortable about disclosing his own struggles. When that happened, his father says, “he became the pariah of the program.” Other students teased and tormented him and administrators worried he might be a sexual predator. “They politely asked him to leave,” Tom recalls, “but they didn’t offer any alternative programs.”
Twist of Fate
It was only by chance the family heard of Oxbow. An administrator at the program Jason was leaving happened to mention the school’s inability to treat sex specific disorders during a professional meeting. An Oxbow official was at the meeting and offered to take Jason.
“In our facility, Jason’s kind of openness is rewarded,” Brooks explains. “He’s not shunned or in danger because everyone else in the program has similar issues. It’s a safer environment for him and he’s not able to groom other students in order to victimize them.”
Because the program is sex-specific, Brooks says staff and students are held to higher accountability. “In another program where they’re not aware those tools or behaviors would go unnoticed or be considered horseplay. At Oxbow staff and residents pick them out and hold each other accountable.”
Tom says having a sex specific treatment center has made all the difference in the world. “There’s a trust that’s established between the boys that allows openness and that openness really helps these kids realize, ‘I’m not alone.’ That lets them open up and share, and sharing takes the power away.”
Is Treatment Necessary?
Shawn Brooks says there’s always a chance a teen will overcome his addiction without treatment. But there’s also a danger a child will start acting out when pictures no longer satisfy their sexual cravings.
“Juveniles are much more amenable to treatment,” Brooks notes. He says statistics show an 80-90% success rate. With adults the outlook is not nearly so positive. “The numbers are almost inverted for adults.”
Jason’s father hopes his son will be able to come home this summer. By then he will have been in treatment for 15 months.
“The earlier you make an intervention, the better your chances of healing,” Dr. Kimball states. “There’s a lot of hope with the right kinds of intervention and family support.”
Brooks adds, “The only way we can track whether or not treatment is working is recidivism rate. Do they go back to those same behaviors after treatment? To say they are cured is almost like saying an alcoholic no longer has the urge to drink anymore. We help them build interventions against urges. They may always feel the urge but they don’t act on it.”
“I’m worried,” Tom admits. “I think there’s always the fear of what could go wrong.” He adds, “But I actually think Jason seems much stronger and more aware of his emotions now than a typical adolescent his age.”
Looking Back, Looking Ahead
When he thinks of his son’s future, Tom is hopeful. He wishes he’d talked more frankly about sex and relationships with his boy, wishes he’d known about the experience that sent his son to the Internet to begin with. “I think that had we been able to assure him that the experience that happened at age five was something that was just curiosity based. It wasn’t as deviant and shameful as he held it to be.”
Dr. Kimball says those kinds of conversations are exactly what help children develop healthy sexuality. “There needs to be open, age appropriate conversations about sex,” he says. “These talks have to start as soon as kids become verbal with appropriate names of body parts and answering questions. Be close to your children. Know them and how they are. Then you can gage if something’s not right.”
Brooks says parents should restrict Internet use and make sure they have filtering devices installed. Even then, be prepared for children to try to get around them. “These kids are amazing at what they can do.”
Tom says he was amazed to discover that most of Jason’s friends had unrestricted access to pornography on the Internet. “I think some parents think they are doing everything right,” he says. “But these kids are so sophisticated. They can put it on a jump drive, burn it to a CD and pass it around at school. There are so many ways for their kids to access that kind of information.”
His experience with Jason has made him a lot more aware of the dangers and the need for discussion. “I feel like I’m a lot more open with my other children,” he says.
His advice? “Don’t assume your child is any different from mine.”
Baby on the Way
Thursday, July 1st, 2010I’ve been sitting by the phone, waiting for Brita to call. Her mare is about to foal – or at least I think that’s the correct terminology. Anyway, a baby horse is expected any day now. I’m a city kid and I’ve never seen the birthing process – not one that involves a horse. But this birth has even more significance. When the baby is only hours old the boys from Oxbow Academy will have an opportunity to “imprint” the little one. They’ll run their hands over its tiny body, feeling its ears, inside its mouth, lifting the little hoofs and gently stroking the baby. Horse people say imprinting is a valuable tool because it teaches the horse not to be afraid of being handled by humans. Therapists say imprinting is important for a whole list of different reasons. It helps the boys learn about trust, about good touch and bad touch, about the vulnerability of a smaller living thing under their hands. So we’re all waiting, watching, and hoping. This is the kind of experience our boys can’t get anywhere else. Hopefully, it’s one they will never forget. One that will help them on their journey toward healing.
Paint the Pony
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010- Paint the Pony
A cold breeze and a skiff of snow on the ground couldn’t keep Oxbow students from their First Annual Paint the Ponies activity.
What started as a Halloween event in 2008 continued this year as an opportunity for students to express their history and their hopes for the future.
Equine directors Brita and Tony North provided each student with a variety of poster paints and instructions to paint their story on one side of a horse.
“Native Americans used to paint their ponies before important battles or hunts,” Brita explained. “Their ponies became a sort of resume and each symbol had special meaning.”
Using that model, the boys developed their own symbols of important events in their lives during class time earlier in the week. Then it was off to the corral to paint the horses with the symbols they created.
Brita explains, “The therapeutic quality is the fact they get to experience it and get to do it and get to live it. And if you live something you’re more likely to engrain it in yourself rather than just talk about it.”
