Addiction, Treatment and Recovery

By David Meggitt, M.A. Candidate

The Betty Ford Children’s Programs are an excellent resource for families struggling with addiction and learning about recovery. While our primary focus is on providing excellent, age-appropriate information and skill building to children who have lived or are living with an addicted loved one, we are able to observe children for an extended period over several days. This allows us to provide much more to the families we serve.

Our program is an opportunity to observe children socially, emotionally, physically and developmentally. Within the last year we have had two children, in particular, who really benefitted from this aspect of the process. One child, a nine-year-old girl, was lagging in physical development, specifically, fine-motor control and hand-eye coordination, which was detected during an activity called the Ultimate Koosh Challenge. Her parents had noticed this prior to the program; but, when they approached their school, the school was not willing to investigate the issue. So when we brought it up during the parent continuing care meeting on Sunday, both parents were relieved to hear the assessment and confirm their own thoughts. We then followed it up with a letter to the parents recommending their daughter be assessed. After she was assessed, she was referred to an occupational therapist and is receiving the help she needs.

The other example was a twelve-year-old boy. We noticed peculiar behavior which aligned with Asperger’s syndrome, and we referred the family to see a psychologist and get an evaluation. After some time, the family was finally able to get their son in to see a psychologist and after a six hour evaluation, our suspicion was confirmed. The young man did have Asperger’s and Mom was relieved and very grateful for the referral. She and her son would be able to address the impact that Asperger’s had been having in their lives and looked forward to understanding each other better as a result.

While not all of our referral meetings have the impact as the examples above, observation is an important aspect of our groups. We at the Betty Ford Center believe addiction is a family disease. Thus, we do not believe in treating just the addicted person, but the family as a whole. Likewise, when working with children, we do not believe in just educating them on what addiction is, but we desire to look at the whole child and examine not only their understanding of addiction, but where they are socially, emotionally, physically and developmentally, so that proper referrals may be made when necessary.

Related posts:

1. Children’s Program News – Colorado
2. Children’s Program News – Texas
3. Colorado Childrens Program News – Summer 2011