The living arrangements are basic as this is not a playground for kids, but a place to learn self worth. My son has said it was difficult at times, but he is grateful for the opportunity to have gone to Second Nature. He also has a new found love for camping and being outdoors.
Upon arriving to Second Nature, your child will be told that you no longer love them. They will be told they are "never going home". They will then shove your child in the back of a car blindfolded before arriving at a residential home where an MD is playing a very secretive game of doctor to give your child a "physical" (not sure if I should really say more to that). Then they take your child to a facility where they are told to strip naked and all their possessions are taken from them, and replaced with ill fitting clothes and backpack.
This is a small, small sampling of what happens at this program. I don't care what your child has done; THIS IS NOT THE ANSWER. If this is being recommended by an "educational consultant" or the like, please note that these people get money for every child they ship to these places. Please, please, please do not do this to your child.
Sores will form on your child's body - it happens to all the kids (I still have scars from them) . Lack of food is also a serious problem, with some days your child being "punished" by not being given hot water to cook their beans and rice. They're then forced to choose between no food or severe, agonising cramps from eating dry beans and rice. The staff literally will laugh in their faces no matter the choice made.
Went here when I was 15, am now 31. This place continues to haunt me. The recruter took advantage of my mother who was desperate for an answer to get me help bc I smoked weed. The process was awful. I was stripped naked, i was forced to hike 20+miles a day bc I was a "bad" person. We were forvced to eat peanut butter and ramen noodles and would not be able to eat healthy unless we could bust our own fire. After no contact allowed bc a therapist said so, 6 months later my parents came to take me home so I thought . WRONG. Tbe contractor forced them to.send me off
Lastly, Second Nature may not be for every child, therefore I highly recommend hiring an Education Consultant to help find the best fit for your child.
If in winter, proper attire and equipment is not given. Your child will be cold near constantly, shivering and in pain. Night time is the worst, when everything is dark and the chill is so severe that your child may be unable to sleep. Just laying in the dark, eyes closed, violently shaking and praying morning comes.
Thank you to everyone who works there.
PARENTS: DO NOT SEND YOUR CHILD HERE (or any other program like this)! Please note the lack of review history from the "good" reviewers - some of them are fake, and some are likely parents who see a "change" (i.e. severe PTSD induced terror). This program is abusive, degrading, and horrifying. I know if you're considering a program like this for your child, you're likely scared and at your wits end. But don't do this to your child. Give them up to the state before sending them here, if you must.
As parents, we are grateful for the support we, too, received. Second Nature recognizes the importance of the family dynamic and they provided ample material to support us, the parents, during and after treatment. We as a family have learned how better to communicate and respect each other ,and we are now using these skills to move forward.
They're then blindfolded and tied up in the back of a car and driven into the wilderness. When they arrive they are informed that there is no one to speak to about their future, that their parents have decided that they can't even look at them one more minute, and that they will be staying here until whenever the staff feel like they can leave. That's day one.
Anyways, it was a great opportunity for me that truly turned my life around.
Going to Second Nature Wilderness program gave me a really solid foundation to move on and go to a Residential Treatment Center afterwards. If I hadn't gone to wilderness first, I would have most likely killed myself within the first few days of treatment. Wilderness, while it may seem not very safe to live in the high desert where it's cold for 10-12 weeks, is actually a very safe place to be and the only treatment intervention extreme enough to save my life. There aren't really any opportunities to hurt yourself, and by the time I found a cliff high enough that if I jumped off it would have killed me, I had been there for 10 weeks and realized I would give the whole "living" thing a try, and meditated at the top of the cliff instead.
We are a real family, with first hand experience regarding Second Nature. Best wishes to any parent or child who is reading this review.
After I realized that there were no other options extreme enough for my issues with drugs, alcohol, suicide, and PTSD, I was no longer upset that I went to wilderness, and it gave me a really strong foundation to change my life. I learned how to be tolerable of difficult situations, and living with the same 10 girls for 3 months of my life really helped me work on my communication skills, which helped me get out of my next phase of treatment at a residential treatment center 3-6 months earlier than most do. I also learned to be less lazy, and to do a lot of things for myself. Please don't let angry letters from your kids for the first few weeks make you want to bring them home, the letters will most likely turn neutral and even hopeful by the end of their stay.
Second Nature strives to teach each of us to take responsibility for our actions - whether we are the parent, the child or a sibling. They do not sugar coat the world, but teach kids that THEY CAN DO IT!
During your child's time, they will routinely be instructed not to defecate for over 24 hours at a time. If they do defecate they are shamed and then told it "might indicate they're not ready to go back to the real world". Yes, for having to go to the bathroom, a human occurrence, your child is threatened with not leaving the program.
After reading the horror stories on the internet, we did not know where to turn. A friend suggested we hire an Educational Consultant named Andy Erkis, and with Andy's help we found Second Nature. This turned out to be a very positive experience for our entire family. Our son was never blind folded, or told we had given up on him. We were in communication the entire time, so he knew we were still here and that we loved him. We were also able to visit him in camp and speak to him freely.
I was sent here when I was 17. I was very reluctant to participate at first. Then being outdoors in the middle of winter grew on me. It really helped me to turn my life around and the staff were always very supportive. One of the most peaceful experiences of my entire life.
Staff will instruct other children to get an empty coffee container full of water and bring it to near boiling. Your child will then be expected to hold their feet up and allow the near boiling water to be tossed on them. If they scream or cry they will be punished for it. By now you can imagine what that punishment might entail.
If you are reading this review, you are most likely a parent who is scared, and lost in the sea of information available on the internet. If you read the earlier review stating "kids are blind folded, told their parents have given up on them", etc. you are now really concerned and bewildered. Please be assured that none of that happened to our son.
At first I really truly hated it here at Second Nature Uintas. It was really cold during my stay (January to April) usually in the negatives at night. The food is repetitive, the hiking was difficult, I always hated camping, the Unita basin is ugly, I was detoxing from heroin, benzos, and all my antidepressants at the same time, BUT I WOULDN'T HAVE WANTED MY TREATMENT TO GO ANY OTHER WAY. Wilderness was of course super uncomfortable, because it's not supposed to be luxurious or even comfortable at all! I hated it and swore to myself that I would never speak to my parents again for sending me there up until 5 minutes before they pulled up to pick me up from my graduation ceremony. I used to write letters telling my parents I couldn't wait for when they picked me up and brought me to Salt Lake so I could run away and become a prostitute for drugs for a week before I killed myself! I went so far as to say that I would rather have been married to the man who sexually assaulted me for the duration of my stay in wilderness rather than be in wilderness, but the reason that I am saying all of this is not to get people to not send their kids here, I'm offering it as a potential reasoning why people have written terrible things about Second Nature Uintas in the other reviews, stories of abuse, etc, which I find very hard to believe to be true, but I do find it to be possible that someone hated Wilderness here enough to make those things up.
Second Nature Wilderness Family Therapy is a US School based in Duchesne, Utah. Second Nature Wilderness Family Therapy is located at 382 W Main St, Duchesne, UT 84021, USA.
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