Family Support & Rebuilding Family Relationships
A major difficulty for all our students is an inability to maintain healthy relationships. Not surprisingly, their relationships with their families often suffer the most. For many students, parents are an obstacle, preventing them from doing what they want. Others feel that their parents do not want them to be "cool," or have any fun. Still others view their families only in terms of what they can gain, seeking to manipulate them to get what they want. As the student continues to fall into still more destructive behaviors, the family is often thrown into disarray. Parents, siblings, grandparents - every member of the family is affected in different ways. Therefore, any long-term solution must involve the whole family.
Every stage of the EXCEL Academy program is aimed at helping families rebuild relationships. Students arrive at the school with one of two attitudes: anger or sadness. Students are rarely able to gain perspective on their parents' decision to enroll them in EXCEL Academy, much less see a need for change in their own lives. The Reflective Phase, the first phase of the program, seeks to confront this head on. Parents are asked to send in an "Impact Letter" that outlines the destructive behaviors of the student, how they affected the family, and the family's goals for the student. This letter prompts students to begin to reflect on their decision and see things from their parents' point of view. Over time, they begin to realize that they are at EXCEL because their parents love them. These new realizations are built upon in the Willingness Phase (phase 2), as students begin to contemplate change.
The Building Phase (phase 3) puts heavy emphasis on rebuilding relationships in the family through pro-active assessment of the past and vision-setting for the future. The primary tool for this is Family Workbook I, which facilitates open discussion of past behaviors, their effects on the entire family, and plans to change them. Of course, no one enjoys remembering the painful times of the past, but it helps students and families deal with the past and begin to work to develop a new and better relationship. This work is continued in the Externalization Phase (phase 4).
The final phase, Internalization Phase, is essentially a complete family process as students begin the process of transitioning out of EXCEL Academy of Texas. During this phase, students and their families receive increased consultation and family system planning. As a capstone, program staff, the student, and the family culminate efforts to create an individualized plan that maximizes a student's chance of success.
EXCEL believes that healing cannot occur without meaningful interaction between family members. Students are able to write home immediately and receive their first phone call at 6 weeks. As the student moves through the phase system, there is a progression of visitation privileges that is designed to cultivate the family process. In the early phases (Reflection and Willingness), students visit with their families on campus. However, they soon progress from off-campus visitation (Building) to overnight visitation (Externalization) and finally to extended home visitation (Internalization).
In addition, parents are offered resources to help them expand their parenting skills via Family IQ, a collection of web-based modules designed to support the student's program and help parents. Parents have the opportunity to learn about addictive behaviors, evaluate their own parenting, and integrate new strategies into the family system. This resource is invaluable for parents struggling to make sense of this whole process.
Throughout their stay at EXCEL, students begin to see their parents in a new light. They become grateful that they have loving parents and want to repair and improve their relationships. This is a great opportunity for families to work together and begin to heal the wounds of the past. The process can be difficult, with frequent steps backwards. However, through the collaborative efforts of the staff, parents, and student, the family learns skills to keep making progress and build lasting and meaningful relationships.