Our Real Ranch Program VS Traditional Boarding Schools

Choosing the right therapeutic program for your teen is crucial when it comes to their future and success. When deciding between residential treatment centers and therapeutic boarding schools, it may be hard to understand the differences between the two. Continue reading to learn the difference between Turn-About Ranch’s residential treatment and traditional boarding schools to find out which one is right for your teen.

Traditional Boarding Schools

How Can Traditional Boarding Schools Help Your Teen

Traditionally, a boarding school consists of residential living, strict schedules, and live-in staff. Boarding schools are structured to help troubled teens by giving them structure, therapy, and a healing environment. A therapeutic boarding school can provide your teen with an ideal environment for academic and personal development. Some ways a traditional boarding school can help your teen include:

• A Change of Environment: Boarding schools offer an academic environment and one that allows teens to work on their personal growth.
• Challenge Experiences: Will encourage personal growth through psychological concepts, such as self-efficacy and a growth mindset.
• Therapy: In therapeutic boarding school, therapy is offered. This helps individual improvements and group dynamics set up a foundation to improve interpersonal effectiveness in families and relationships.
• Healthy Relationship Development: Peer groups give patients the opportunities to practice healthy relationships.

Parents also have the option to send their teen to a military, college prep, behavioral, therapeutic, or religious boarding school.

How Do Boarding Schools Work?

While there are multiple different boarding schools you can choose from, when it comes to your struggling teen, therapeutic boarding schools will be most helpful. A therapeutic boarding school is a private school that addresses the needs of teens with behavior issues. Teens live on the school campus. Parents typically pay part or all of the cost to send their children to this type of live-in treatment setting.

Turn-About Ranch’s Therapy Treatment

Therapy is important to the overall change process for parents and teens alike. However, most teens struggle with typical outpatient therapy and may even become fairly skilled at manipulating therapists in the standard setting.

At Turn-About Ranch, our goal is to help teens recognize that therapists are not the enemy and that the therapeutic process can be helpful in achieving positive lasting change. We approach this by combining weekly private sessions taking place in various settings. Teen’s who come to our ranch, participate in both individual and group counseling sessions as well as work with their therapist on ranch projects. We not only want to follow our therapeutic impressions in session, but also see how the teen is functioning with their peers, in school, in equine therapy, and in all aspects of their life here at the program.

What is Residential Treatment?

Residential treatment allows teens to receive 24-hour care while pursuing therapeutic treatment to confront problem behaviors. These centers are there to provide patients with safe, effective care and help them address behavioral issues. An effective residential treatment program will usually provide:

• Comprehensive Evaluation
• An Individualized Treatment Plan:
• Therapy
• Family Support

The goal of residential treatment is to take teens out of their current environment and put them in a facility that is meant to be a haven for them. This gets them away from any potential triggers and they can learn more about themselves and their feelings.

How Does Residential Treatment Work?

Residential treatment programs are designed to accommodate people with a variety of different concerns. Teens that enter these treatment programs typically have to undergo both mental and physical assessments to indicate what level of care they need to help with their long-term success. Such assessments are also used to help the treatment facility determine if the teen is a good fit for their program as they’ll want to make sure they’re able to provide the teen with the level of care they need.

Residential treatment centers provide a variety of evidence-based therapeutic modalities as part of the treatment process. Similar to wilderness therapy, teens will be able to get away from their current environment which could be adding to their stress and inhibit necessary change. By offering these therapeutic opportunities, residential treatment centers offer support to people so they can work to achieve an improved quality of life and transformation.

Residential Therapy at Turn-About Ranch

At Turn-About Ranch, we take traditional treatment models used to help troubled youth develop into effective individuals and combine them with our ranch. While on the ranch, students learn about concepts like leadership, teamwork, accountability, and responsibility. They are also given the opportunity to utilize what they’re learning in a real-world environment. Through their work on the ranch, students reap many benefits from successfully completing tasks in the appropriate manner and handling the consequences of their actions.

Which Option is Better?

At Turn-About Ranch, we believe that residential treatment is always a better option for struggling teens. This is because of the care that goes into your teen’s individualized treatment plan. While Turn-About Ranch is a residential treatment center, we believe we give teens the experience of a residential treatment facility and a traditional boarding school. Students get to participate in school, therapy, and our horsemanship program.

Need Help? Call Turn-About Ranch

Here at Turn-About Ranch, we are committed to helping you and your teen. We have created a facility where our students can grow and work on their issues in a safe environment. If you believe that we are a good fit for your child, contact us and our admissions team will be in touch with you as soon as possible.