What it Takes to Get Me Through

• About the Book
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• Excerpt
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• Main Characters

Excerpt from the Book

In hopes of opening the "black box" of the teenage psyche, I decided to write about kids who’d gotten in trouble and who, along with their parents, were getting help. I wanted to look mostly at children of the middle-class, but I hoped for a broad sample, from urban working-class kids to teens from bustling suburbs where families appear to have it all. Following students at a school that offers intensive counseling seemed the best way to explore the welter of challenges facing today's teenagers -- from ADHD, to videogame addiction, to depression, to drug abuse. Many psychologists recommended the Academy at Swift River in western Massachusetts.

In June of 2001, I began observing as the Swift River admissions department selected a peer group--a dozen students who would go through the fourteen-month program together. The school allowed me complete access to group therapy, classes and supervisors’ meetings. Parents let me sit in on their seminars and informal discussions with school staff. But the most important access came from the kids, who let me immerse myself in their lives, whether they were kicking back in the dorms or baring their souls in family confrontations. On breaks, I accompanied them to their neighborhoods, their old high schools and hangouts.

By the end of fourteen months, I’d heard about the traumas they’d endured, the friends they’d made and lost, the dreams they clung to. I learned the secrets that they had kept for years from their parents, teachers and guidance counselors -- the very people who might have helped them. Swift River's students had taken more risks than their brothers and sisters or their childhood friends. They did hard drugs; they got drunk and took out mom’s car for a ninety-mile-per hour spin; they went through a dozen sexual partners in a few months. But they weren’t freaks. In my years as an education reporter, I'd found kids like them at massive public schools and at elite private academies. Every teenager in America sits in classrooms with them and ends up at parties with them. We can all learn from them.

-- from the Introduction