Contemporary socio-economic blather puts such emphasis upon the individual that some can't help but imagine that they live independently, that they need count on no one else, and so they live entirely in emotional isolation, careless about the needs and happiness of others. By their behavior such people betray their conviction-and teach their children-that the good life is every man for himself.

It's hard to miss that this is not what the adults at MA believe. It's not how they behave, nor what they teach. A few encounters with other parents at a work-shop, or a few student accounts of team-mates' parents, will persuade you correctly that we make an assiduous, conscious effort to choose students whose parents don't think or behave that way, either. Why? Because we do not choose individual teenagers to treat in isolation, or families to help one at a time. We are choosing a community. We learned long ago that in significant part the constructive change that happens at Montana Academy results from a collective magic-a function of a common culture-to which every student, teacher, therapist, cook, team-leader and parent contributes.

What does this mean in practice? It means that helping a student shrug off past misbehavior, wriggle free of developmental obstacles, and grow up into a competent, confident, civilized young adult is a shared parental effort. It means that every parent supports every other parent by sustaining a collaborative, friendly, affectionate culture that recognizes teenagers clearly and sets limits for them firmly. Every parent keeps the circle close, and closed, and holds onto all the community's children, and holds all the children accountable. Every parent supports all the staff and all the other children when they embrace the cultural norms, accept the community's constraints and requirements, participate in community rituals, and defend the community's rules, which are accepted, even at the cost of inconvenience, as applying to all. When all of us lift, the levitation seems almost effortless-but it requires us all.

Yet it's immediately noticeable, given how interconnected we are, whenever a student lets go-of her team-mates, of parents-and willfully ceases to participate and drops out of the community. This very rare event took place recently when a student caught sight of her boyfriend on FaceBook near her birthday and demanded her right (at 18) to walk away-from her team, from the community, from siblings and parents-and then, after considerable discussion, she did so. Upsetting to the ranch community as this was, it was more disturbing, because her departure was actively abetted by parents of an ex-boyfriend back home, three thousand miles from Lost Prairie, who took it upon themselves to encourage their son to oppose her parents' legitimate prerogatives. But there was more. A student at the ranch colluded with her mother to help arrange for the boyfriend to come to Montana to pick her up-by texting the boyfriend while on pass using her mother's cell-phone. Her mother, who helped her do it, proposed to her daughter that she "not tell MA."

I mention this debacle, whose details are already in the public domain, not to imply that this breach of parental solidarity with MA is unique or novel. Rather, I bring it up to bring it to your attention so that we can think out loud about such betrayals. Over the years we have seen a few parents break our rules, violate pass "agreements," permit unlicensed 15 year-olds to drive rental cars, or let a son or daughter sip Daddy's martini in a restaurant. I alluded to these breaches of parental solidarity in my second book , where I also considered why otherwise intelligent parents might find effective limit-setting difficult:

Some parents are reluctant to set limits because . . . they're ashamed or guilty about marital failure, sorry about what divorce has cost the children. Some recognize their own defects as parents and know they should control their tempers better, come home sooner, drink less, and pay the bills on time. Some are humiliated by past failures (to conceive) . . . and worry they may not be able to bind an adopted child to themselves. . . . Some adults are themselves ill or disabled, and sorry about what they've been unable to provide . . . [and so] they wince at the idea of holding a son or daughter to account.

[For these reasons] ashamed, guilty or sorry parents are likely to cut a teenager more slack then he deserves. . . . When parents feel ashamed and guilty, a teenager's threats do not provoke the indignation they deserve. Those threats can immobilize an anxious, remorseful parent (pp. 88-91).

There are other reasons. Some parents don't know how to set a limit, and haven't bothered to learn, it being easier to delegate this task to others, so as to preserve a cozy permissive sense of parental wonderfulness. Other parents are too narcissistic to set a limit, for they think they themselves are so special that the rules really don't apply to them, and, by extension, why should they apply to a very special son or daughter?

I am not trying to be exhaustive here-as to the reasons particular parents fail to parent. Rather, I wish to call attention to the corrosive effect of this failure in the MA community, or in any community, therapeutic or otherwise, where parental responsibility is shared. For no family is an island, entire of itself, but is a part of the main. With this thought in mind, I write to give you this background, in particular, but also to explain, in general, why we take such trouble at admission about choosing you-not just your children-and why we take subversive parental misbehavior seriously and may take firm steps, when we need to, to preserve and protect the MA community.

For we all need the magic. And we know from experience that it only takes a few-joining kids in a sneaky defiance, or bullying staff, or excusing themselves and their sons or daughters from our shared rules or from the collective limit-setting of the law, or "pulling" a student prematurely, without regard for the impact upon other students and other parents-to break the spell.

About The Author:
John McKinnon is Co-Founder of Montana Academy in Marion, MT. For more information, contact him at 406-858-2339 x230 john.mckinnon@gmail.com. To learn more about Montana Academy, visit www.montanaacademy.com

Copyright© by author John A. McKinnon MD, all rights reserved. The author has given us a one-time permission to publish this essay.