"What kind of place picks up kids in the middle of the night?"
We hired an educational consultant and were advised to have an escort pick him up in the middle of the night. There was a real chance had he known what our plans were, he would have bolted.
"Does it cost a fortune?"
I assume you're talking about the escort to the wilderness. There were two guys and we paid their airfare (our son was taken to Second Nature in Duchesne, Utah, we live in L.A.), plus our son's airfare, plus the fee. IIRC, the tab for the night was about $2,500.
The wilderness was for six weeks and it was roughly $18,000. The therapeutic boarding school is $6,200 a month. We're fortunate to be able to afford this, we think about those who cannot and are forced to take their chances with their kid in either a less expensive out-patient program or do nothing. My wife and I agreed that whatever the cost, we would do what needed to be done--including selling everything we have.
"Does your kid write to you or call home?"
He writes weekly and we speak to him weekly. But just for twenty minutes. Each school has their own method and way of dealing with the kids.
The hardest days were the first few when he went away. You get a call to let you know he arrived OK and how he's doing, but you don't speak to him for awhile.
When the wilderness experience is over, and you've arranged for whatever arrangements for after that (some people, mistakenly, in my judgment, take their kids home), the parents go and spend two nights in the wilderness with their child. It was the greatest experience of our lives. We were led in blindfolded, just holding onto our son, he gives you presents he made for you, and you live in the wilderness with nothing but the skills he has acquired while there.
"You mentioned that you are fixing your mistakes. When you say 'mistakes' are you talking about being too harsh or too lenient with the parenting?"
I don't know. In certain respects probably too harsh, and in others too lenient. The experience is probably too close to us now to really judge objectively. The bottom line is that none of us--my son, my wife, myself--can take back what was or was not done and all we can do is try to not make the same mistakes again. I will say all of us are communicating now as we never did, that my wife and I are cognizant of many things we didn't do that we should have, and that we're trying to be attuned to him and he to us. We go back to the school next in December. There's a workshop for parents only, then family sessions involving three families, the therapists, and upper class student helpers. We then have a regional visit where we will take him off campus for two nights. He will then come home to spend some time with us in March and he graduates in August. So he will have been at the boarding school for 15 months.
Here's the school:
http://www.carlbrook.org/
But the website doesn't do their program justice. These people are so dedicated, so caring.
Here is the wilderness program he went to:
http://www.snwp.com/
"Some kids just have an obstinate immature personality right?"
I don't know if anything we could have done would have ended up with a different story for our son. All I know is we're trying to do all we can to make sure there's a happy ending, or at least to give him the tools and the opportunity to make a happy ending for himself.