Searching for a Residential Treatment Center in Des Moines, Iowa, for Your Troubled Teenager? Is Your Child Acting Out Behaviorally, Participating in Dangerous Activities, or Acting Despondent, Entitled, or Uncaring? Has Your Teen Inexplicably Rejected Your Family and Everything You Hold Dear There in Des Moines, Iowa?
Stillwater Academy, with its campus in Utah, is a residential treatment center that helps such troubled teens from Des Moines, Iowa, and from around the country. We provide a unique treatment model that also helps the teen’s loved ones recover from the unexpected disruptions and stress caused by their child’s inappropriate behavior.
Our unequaled therapeutic program and school deserves consideration for your child since we provide unparalleled therapy not typically available in teen-focused residential treatment centers in Des Moines, Iowa. The Stillwater professional team includes dedicated and caring therapists, doctors, and mentors from all over the country. We compiled an “A-Team” here in Utah to help troubled teens like yours get on the right path again.
With our therapy-immersed environment, with access to therapeutic tools, reinforcement, encouragement, and with time to practice new behaviors, your your teen will begin to excel. Since you are looking at residential treatment centers in Des Moines, Iowa, it is because you are fearful for your teen’s future and need to get help before they become an adult.
You may have already tried weekly therapy sessions with a counselor in Des Moines, Iowa, but those have not helped. Maybe you feel embarrassed that your teen has gotten on the wrong path in life, putting undue blame on yourself for your child’s behavior, or you wonder if you are a “bad parent.” Let us say emphatically that even the most attentive and caring parents can have a troubled teen.
Your Troubled Teen Probably Doesn’t Know Why They are Acting the Way They Do, Nor Do They Conceive Why You Are So Concerned About It!
The reality is that most troubled teens don’t understand why they behave as they do. They can feel sad, angry, or like they’ll explode at any moment and don’t know why. Or, they don’t at all care about anything or anyone – they feel numb. When they mature in a few years they’ll look back and wonder what they were thinking when they were a troubled teenager. But today, parents know that their out-of-control, despondent, or uncaring behavior can lead to drastic and even deadly consequences. So, wanting to help keep their child safe and to salvage their child’s future, they seek out residential treatment programs like Stillwater in order to get professional help.
Dangerous and oblivious behavior, or a child overwhelmed with sad thoughts, is not normal. The affected child may subconsciously be responding to traumatic events in their life, like adoption, death or illness of someone close, moving to a new city, parental conflict or separation, conflict with authority figures, early childhood abuse, drug use, social media addiction, bullying, or even guilt. They may have had a life impacting incident that you don’t even know of. Or, they may have been seeking attention from an unruly crowd that then became a negative influence. They may feel entitled and are unwilling to accept direction, correction, or adhere to society’s established norms. Some teens need to learn that “freedom” has limits; it doesn’t mean they have the freedom to do anything they want to, any time they want to do it.
Our Therapists Will First Discover the Underlying Causes of Your Teen’s Troubles, so Recovery Can be Made
The expert therapy team at Stillwater understands the underlying roots of anger, despondency, misbehavior, and a lack of attention or emotional control. They will work with your child daily to uncover and get to the bottom of their deepest fears and their subconscious grounds for discontent. Teens here learn to take responsibility for their feelings, thoughts, actions, and reactions. They develop a clearer self-concept and a more serious take on preparing for their future.
We’ll help them not only cope but to hope and dream again for a happy, meaningful, and successful life. It is critical that they have time on campus to test their wings – to utilize the tools and concepts they’ve learned. They’ll be working daily on their new thinking and behaviors, making better actions and reactions more habitual before returning home. An extended period on campus allows your child to repeat newly learned skills in a safe, reinforcing environment.
Therapy at Stillwater includes individual mentoring and counseling, a defined structure, boundaries, recreational activities, animal-assisted therapy, group therapy, and an emphasis on honest but respectful communication. In addition, our therapists use various therapeutic tools, like Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Rational Emotive Therapy, Experiential Therapy, Play Therapy, Reality Therapy, Equine-Assisted Therapy, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy, and others. The focus is always on healing your troubled child, so they can quickly return home to Des Moines, Iowa, and aftercare is also provided, so your child doesn’t fall back into old negative habits.
As a Key Aspect of Our Therapy for Teens from Des Moines, Iowa, Equine Therapy Provides Immediate Feedback
An important element of the Stillwater therapeutic milieu is the therapeutic animals, especially horses, that we use as incredible behavioral feedback tools. Horses, in particular, naturally mirror the emotions of the teen handling them. A badly treated horse will, in turn, become unmanageable and reject direction by the handler. A calm and controlled attitude by the handler (your teenager) will cause the horse to also be calm and controlled – accepting direction.
So, animal-assisted therapy provides the teenager unparalleled opportunities to see how their behaviors, outbursts, and reactions affect others. Feedback received while working with horses will assist other therapy modes by providing a clear gauge of their attitudinal progress. Moreover, caring for an animal also helps build responsibility and character. It gives the teen a new open-minded friend to talk to, instead of holding it all in.
Discover Why Stillwater May Be a Better Option than Other Residential Treatment Centers in Des Moines, Iowa, Including Our Emphasis on Academic Repair and Improvement
You don’t want your child to fall through the cracks academically while they get their behavior under control, and neither do we! Education goes on here year-round, and class sizes at Stillwater are small. The accredited curriculum is uniquely matched to the individual, so each student learns at their own level and pace, overseen and encouraged by licensed teachers. Such focused academic attention has proven especially helpful for struggling students with poor grades, attention deficits, or learning disorders.
Students at Stillwater begin to thrive educationally as they also improve behaviorally, emotionally, and mentally. Academic subjects such as Math, Science, English, History, and Art, along with others, all start to make sense and come to life for our students – some of whom have never excelled in school. In fact, on average, students see a 1.5 grade-point increase in their cumulative GPA while they are in our program.
The National Association of Special Education Teachers recognizes Stillwater Academy as a School of Excellence, their highest award. Curriculum specialists develop the coursework at Stillwater Academy, so all courses meet state and national accreditation agency standards. This process includes post-secondary dual credit courses and allows your student to earn high school and higher education credits at the same time to allow for the easy transfer of credits back to their school in Des Moines, Iowa.
There May Be Residential Treatment Centers in Des Moines, Iowa, But Based on the Therapies Provided Stillwater in Utah the Better Choice
Everyone at the Stillwater Academy residential treatment center – from our administrators to clinical staff to the school teachers and housing parents – has a singular focus and goal. That is, to support and enhance the therapy the child receives while here. These 24/7 reinforcements are also why the on-site living part of the program is so instrumental in bringing about lasting change.
Our facility is a safe place for recovery, for your child to heal from previous harmful choices, and to repeatedly practice new, more positive behaviors. When a student slips back into old ways of thinking, they are lovingly pointed out by our staff, and even by other students. After a day of school, activities, and therapy, our student houses become a fantastic informal support group as students process and practice the treatment and advice they received during the day.
Our home-style recovery homes help the residents learn how to live and think better with 24/7 supervision and guidance from well-trained, state-licensed house parents. They communicate with each teen and provide valuable life skills training. The recovery process for troubled teens is greatly enhanced by having trained staff members offering correction, reinforcement, a listening ear, and encouragement.
Other Residential Treatment Centers in Des Moines, Iowa, Can Help Turn Around a Troubled Teen, But If You Live Too Close, Enrolling Your Teen in a Residential Treatment Center in Des Moines, Iowa May Not Be Advised. Here’s Why…
Your teenager may have some equally troubled teenage friends in the local community who will gladly come to “rescue” them from the facility if they can. Therefore, when enrolling students in our program in Utah, we do not accept those from the immediate 100-mile radius around our campus. There is too great a chance for your teen, while still in their defiance early in the program, to connect with their local friends. And the surrounding area is too familiar, allowing them to easily go into hiding. Moreover, the greater distance your child is from your hometown in Des Moines, Iowa, the better they will understand the urgency of getting with the program and cooperating with their therapists.
We May Be a Distance from Other Options for Residential Treatment in Des Moines, Iowa, But Is More Important is Getting the Right Answer, the First Time
The Stillwater team has been helping teens for four decades – so there isn’t anything we haven’t seen or any teen that can pull the wool over our eyes – we’ve seen it all! We welcome you to contact us today. We can evaluate your child to determine if a residential treatment center like ours is needed, and if Stillwater is a perfect fit for your child.
We steadfastly believe that lifelong change happens in the heart and that positive actions need repeated exercise to grow into familiar habits. We’re not interested in quick or superficial fixes. Really, we mean it, so call us with your questions, or take our free troubled teen online assessment on this site to see if your child is a good fit for Stillwater.
By the way, many costs during your child’s time at Stillwater are usually covered by medical insurance, so call us today to learn more and get pre-qualified. We have openings right now. Call (385) 352-3371.
More about troubled teen residential treatment centers in Des Moines, Iowa: Des Moines is the capital and the most populous city in the US state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small portion of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines which was shortened to “Des Moines” in 1857. It is named after the Des Moines River, which may have been adapted from the French Rivire des Moines, literally meaning “River of the Monks.” The five-county metropolitan area is ranked 88th in terms of population in the United States with 569,633 residents according to the 2010 count by the United States Census Bureau. The city proper population was 203,433 at the 2010 census. Excerpt about residential treatment centers in Des Moines, Iowa, used with permission from Wikipedia. |
