Girls Wilderness Therapy: Family Coach Discusses Importance of Family Programming For Female Students

At Trails Carolina, we believe that family support plays an important role in creating lasting change. Female students in particular may need this family support in order to experience personal growth and empowerment. For girls, wilderness therapy provides a healthy outlet and helps them learn skills they never thought possible before attending our program.

Trails Family Programming helps parents better support and empower their daughters

In my experience, families who have daughters that are struggling with an emotional or behavioral challenge often exhibit the natural tendency to want to rescue the child and fix the problem for her. Within girls wilderness therapy, there are endless opportunities for female students to feel empowered by the accomplishments they achieve during their time here.
At Trails Carolina, we try to help parents find the line between supporting their daughters and helping them explore their own capabilities. A lot of the time, girls discover what they are capable of through their failures and struggles. By allowing them to learn from these experiences, parents can help their daughters find success.

Family Programming and Overcoming Challenges

Out of the understandable desire to see their child happy, it is a common response for parents to step in to fix their daughter’s problems for her,  often inadvertently sending a message that conveys to a child that she is incapable of solving her own dilemmas. We help parents develop strategies that put the ball in their daughter’s court and allow them to work with their daughter, rather than for her, to come up with her own solutions to whatever challenge she may encounter.
Girls often come into Trails thinking that they are incapable of spending any time in the woods. During their time at our program, these feelings usually disappear. The confidence they gain during expeditions can be tied to the physical accomplishments they experience. In the wilderness, girls can observe their progress in tangible ways, such as learning how to build a fire.
Some parents may struggle with the idea that their daughter is out in the woods. However, when parents hear of their daughter’s accomplishments throughout our program, it often allows them to see how their daughters have taken charge of their struggles in a positive way and helps them feel more prepared to continue to support their daughters through empowering, rather than rescuing, after completion of the program.
Family programming acts as a bridge between student and parent during a child’s time at Trails. As the holiday season approaches, this connection becomes all the more essential to families.  Although the holiday season can be a hard time to send your child away to wilderness therapy, Trails provides a wide array of activities during the holiday season that help your daughter celebrate, and our family programming supports parents through their own parallel process. Learn more about our holiday celebrations here.

Trails Carolina can help

Trails Carolina is a wilderness therapy program for struggling teens, ages 10-17. Our students commonly deal with issues such as depression, anxiety, ADHD, trauma, and other behavioral challenges.
For more information  about Trails Carolina, please call 800-975-7303 or 828-885-5920 today.