Abby Connolly
It’s always tragic to hear stories of parents who didn’t know what to do with their kids who were going through a hard time, so they put them in alternative living situations that were far worse for their mental health than living at home.
One young man is trying to recover after moving out of a group home for troubled teens his parents placed him in when he was 17.
As a teenager, he played football for his high school team. When he was around 17, he suffered a horrible concussion while playing and had to spend a long time recovering.
“My parents were very concerned and took me to doctors and physical therapists,” he explained.
“My memory was hazy, and I had some range of motion problems with my neck, but that was it; I recovered fully. I missed a lot of school, though, and the makeup workload was killer. I was drowning in that schoolwork for months, going through some loneliness issues, and I didn’t enjoy life. This feeling followed me home, where I was dismissive to my folks.”
He had struggled to maintain a good relationship with his parents before his injury, but afterward, things got worse between them. One evening, he admitted to his dad that he was tired of him and his mom always being on his case and that he wanted them to stop bugging him about his schoolwork and focus more on his mental health.
However, his dad didn’t seem empathetic and instead suggested that his concussion was the only thing impacting him mentally.
Eventually, his parents sat him down and told him they found “alternative housing” he could live in for a year until he was a legal adult.
“l liked the idea initially, but to my surprise, they had already selected a place, a group home for drug recoveries and societal integration,” he recalled.
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