DESPERATE PARENTS AND DANGEROUS CHOICES

NORTHEAST HARBOR, Me. -- Many parents are understandably shocked and
horrified by the death of a 14- year-old boy at a desert boot camp this
week. Tony Haynes, a troubled boy whose parents sent him to the camp in
Arizona to instill some discipline, died there under suspicious
circumstances. According to witnesses, he had been beaten and forced to
eat mud. Many will wonder: How could people treat children this way? How
could parents send their children to a place where such things could
happen?

But others, like me, will read this news with grim recognition and the
sad realization: "That could have been my kid." Three years ago I didn't
know what to do to save my daughter.

She was doing everything possible to hurt herself -- dropping out of
school, sneaking out of the house, running away, cutting herself,
stealing, taking drugs, drinking and attempting suicide.

Some of this I knew then. Some of it I found out later. But I did know
that I would lose my 15-year-old daughter if I didn't do something
quickly. Through good luck and good friends I found a reputable
"education consultant" -- one of a legion of such advisers in a rapidly
growing industry that caters to the parents of troubled teens.

These consultants work as brokers to help parents find places for their
children.

The programs can be expensive. "Can you afford $100,000 a year?" I was
asked. "Can you afford $40,000?" What price do you put on it? There are
all kinds of programs for troubled teens -- from simple farmhouses where
gruff, kindly couples take in four or five girls at a time to
residential educational institutions where teens get group counseling.
There are places where kids are actually locked up like prisoners.

There are hospitals. And there are wilderness programs run by avid
outdoorsmen or former marines. It's so hard to know what to do if you
are a frightened parent and your child is out of control, if you can no
longer talk to her, if she is disappearing for days at a time and when
she does come home she is like an angry stranger. And then, here is this
voice over the phone telling you, reassuring you, that if you send a
certain amount of money, your daughter will be cured.

Your child's fury can be turned into self-esteem, her despair into
confidence. It sounds like what you really want -- hope. When my
ex-husband and I decided to send our daughter away to a wilderness
program, we got references and talked to other parents who had sent
their children to such places.

He went out to Idaho to see the program for himself and to meet some of
the counselors I had interviewed by phone.

It seemed like a good place.

Our daughter slashed her wrists the second night she was there. But she
survived that. In time, the program did what it was supposed to do. It
got my daughter off drugs for a few weeks.

It got her away from her friends.

It got her away from me and made it harder for her to blame me for
everything. It got her out into the fresh air and under the wide sky,
and made her work hard and hike long and fall asleep tired and too
exhausted to argue anymore.

And she did, I believe, gain some measure of confidence from learning to
do hard things in hard places.

She was lucky. Not everyone is so lucky.

The Haynes family was not so lucky.

Some camps and centers have counselors who are poorly trained or barely
trained at all. Clearly, the camp where Tony Haynes died had problems
that his parents could not have foreseen; this week the camp was shut
down. But how could a desperate parent know? My daughter is better now.
She cured herself, really.

Time helped.

And through trial and error we found a wonderful place where she could
finish school. I think the wilderness experience was a good one for her.
Though she hated it at the time, she says now she might like to work at
such a camp someday, to help other kids. "I understand them," she says.
She'd be a great counselor. She's compassionate and smart, and she's
been through it.