Parent News Update - November 2009
Treatment Philosophy
Red Rock Videos Student Therapy Family Support Student Life Residential Treatment Positive Peer CultureStudent Life
Student Daily Schedule Student Newsletter Student Athletics Outcome Statistics Transitional Living Student AftercareParent Resources
School Newsletters Student Financing Clinical Information Parent Newsletter Application Download Links Twitter Facebook Suggested Reading Teen Horse Therapy Program Site Map
2009-11-09
By: Barry
Yimminy! I'm a couple months behind in my parent news updates so please give me a minute or two while I jog my short term memory for something to report.
I see that there's still a few pieces of artwork hanging in the hallway of the main facility following our last family weekend (Sept. 4 - 6). These remaining tokens of what your children are doing in Nanci's classroom remind me of what it took for her to get each of them to reveal something about themselves that their case files alone can't easily explain.
Anyone who has worked in this field long enough has undoubtedly witnessed so called "hopeless cases" make liars out of the best of us. It happens! And isn't it wonderful, even for the experts who are left dumbfounded, when your child suddenly "gets it", beating all of the odds? For parents who have prayed, and who have waited for years for just such a moment to happen, Christmas comes early. What's the "moral of the story?" Isn't it that we should never underestimate God's love for his little ones, nor his wonders to perform.
But back to my standing ovation for Nanci. Without her clever imagination, artistic skill, and the enormous energy she put into making that Saturday night (9/5) dinner show visually entertaining, there would have been little else to lighten the overload of information that's often a feature at these workshop-packed Family Weekends. A case in point was the tuxedo'd penguin she suspended on a surfboard in front of a wired-up wave that was about as long as the stage. Perhaps those of us in this business who saw it that night were reminded about the risks of taking ourselves too seriously sometimes. Clearly, there is more to learning about how to catch the perfect wave than we can even begin to contemplate, perhaps even allow for... as learned as we may be.
To you, Nanci, and to each one of your helpers, we extend a bouquet of thank you's, if not flowers, and look forward to whatever it is you plan on doing for out next Family Weekend, Dec 20th - 22nd.
What else? Yesterday, a young man named Brian from the Blue Unit, whose family lives in a suburb outside of Chicago, took his first mountain bike ride with me. After we had completed our moderately paced workout along a bike path which skirted the Virgin river, I commented him on his fitness, and he replied that ever since he's been at Red Rock--and off drugs-- he's taken a renewed interest in in caring for his body and mind. He's become genuinely excited about by the grades he's been earning in the classroom and looks as mountain biking as an additional way to train for a spot on his High School football team after he graduates and goes home. If that's not a forward change in thinking that spells success in any endeavor than I don't know what is!
Thanksgiving is fast approaching and if you're anything like me, you anticipate the way it's celebrated like a few other holidays on the calender. Taken as a modern social phenomenon, Thanksgiving Day continues to to inspire most Americans to to revere to their shores as "land of the pilgrims pride." What a privilege it is then, to step out of character for one day, bow our heads, and in the words a children's song, name out many blessings one by one, that we might more clearly see "what God has done."
By: Barry
Yimminy! I'm a couple months behind in my parent news updates so please give me a minute or two while I jog my short term memory for something to report.
I see that there's still a few pieces of artwork hanging in the hallway of the main facility following our last family weekend (Sept. 4 - 6). These remaining tokens of what your children are doing in Nanci's classroom remind me of what it took for her to get each of them to reveal something about themselves that their case files alone can't easily explain.
Anyone who has worked in this field long enough has undoubtedly witnessed so called "hopeless cases" make liars out of the best of us. It happens! And isn't it wonderful, even for the experts who are left dumbfounded, when your child suddenly "gets it", beating all of the odds? For parents who have prayed, and who have waited for years for just such a moment to happen, Christmas comes early. What's the "moral of the story?" Isn't it that we should never underestimate God's love for his little ones, nor his wonders to perform.
But back to my standing ovation for Nanci. Without her clever imagination, artistic skill, and the enormous energy she put into making that Saturday night (9/5) dinner show visually entertaining, there would have been little else to lighten the overload of information that's often a feature at these workshop-packed Family Weekends. A case in point was the tuxedo'd penguin she suspended on a surfboard in front of a wired-up wave that was about as long as the stage. Perhaps those of us in this business who saw it that night were reminded about the risks of taking ourselves too seriously sometimes. Clearly, there is more to learning about how to catch the perfect wave than we can even begin to contemplate, perhaps even allow for... as learned as we may be.
To you, Nanci, and to each one of your helpers, we extend a bouquet of thank you's, if not flowers, and look forward to whatever it is you plan on doing for out next Family Weekend, Dec 20th - 22nd.
What else? Yesterday, a young man named Brian from the Blue Unit, whose family lives in a suburb outside of Chicago, took his first mountain bike ride with me. After we had completed our moderately paced workout along a bike path which skirted the Virgin river, I commented him on his fitness, and he replied that ever since he's been at Red Rock--and off drugs-- he's taken a renewed interest in in caring for his body and mind. He's become genuinely excited about by the grades he's been earning in the classroom and looks as mountain biking as an additional way to train for a spot on his High School football team after he graduates and goes home. If that's not a forward change in thinking that spells success in any endeavor than I don't know what is!
Thanksgiving is fast approaching and if you're anything like me, you anticipate the way it's celebrated like a few other holidays on the calender. Taken as a modern social phenomenon, Thanksgiving Day continues to to inspire most Americans to to revere to their shores as "land of the pilgrims pride." What a privilege it is then, to step out of character for one day, bow our heads, and in the words a children's song, name out many blessings one by one, that we might more clearly see "what God has done."
