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December 15, 2004
Over the years I have read your reports and news regarding
boarding schools with great interest. Four years ago I turned
to your website for help for finding such a school for my
then fourteen year old son who was having, to put it mildly,
a very difficult time navigating through his early adolescence.
In fact, our whole family was in a stage of general malaise
and meltdown. Encouraged by not only the information we found
in your reports but also by attending various school introduction
receptions where we live in New York City, we came upon The
Hyde School. The families we encountered at one such reception
encouraged us to visit this unique school. Our lives were
about to change in ways we could have never imagined.
My son entered the Hyde School as a ninth grader with a
bad attitude for just about everything. While I thought I
had been doing what I needed as a parent and finding the
right guidance and support for my entire family, I have come
to realize over the last four years of his attendance at
Hyde just how much help I needed in the parenting process.
Hyde's basic promise of a family based character education
could only be fulfilled, we found, if we were willing to
undergo changes that resonated to our core.
The changes did not come easily. In the early years of his
Hyde schooling, our son resisted the challenges presented
to him and very often sought the comfort of what was familiar
to him, that being, mine and especially my wife's willingness
to allow him what he now acknowledges were "back doors" from
taking genuine, personal responsibility for his own actions
in life. In the Hyde environment of challenge and support,
my wife and I finally found the courage to take a long and
hard look at our own lives and the potential for bettering
our marriage. We came to believe a central tenet of Hyde's
philosophy that our son would not begin to make the changes
he needed in himself unless we were willing to look at the
changes we needed to make in our lives as well. Hyde has
demanded a great degree of family involvement while encouraging
each family member to take accountability for our own actions
or lack thereof. Hyde is not about mere behavior modification
but wholly concerned with the transformation most families
must go through after they arrive in order to reach the best
potential of each family member. That transformation takes
time and it is not easy for those who are not willing to
take an honest and critical self evaluation of how they are
leading their own lives and recognizing the impact they have
on the family dynamic.
I remember at the Hyde reception I attended hearing an
expression to the affect that, "the truth will set
you free- - finding it will make you miserable". That
phrase has stuck with me throughout our years at Hyde and
has greatly helped me in watching the pain of my son's
evolving struggle with his learning attitude and relationship
to his peers and family members. The truth I can happily
report at this time is that he has truly struggled his
way into becoming a learner, a leader in the campus community
and headed for a four year college. Where he once was a "labeled" child
who often quit with the "support" that he was
burdened with a variety of learning disabilities, he has
now managed to earn consideration for the captaincy of
several of Hyde's sports teams, and, most importantly,
earned the respect of his peers and Hyde faculty. Hyde
has consistently been more interested in his potential
and his giving of his best effort than in what he had previously
been told he could not accomplish. He acknowledges that
Hyde demanded much from him, set his expectations higher
than he ever could have on his own, with the result that
he has the freedom to run his own life.
The Hyde School should be considered by every parent who
honestly wants the opportunity to set their child on a journey
of self exploration and character building and, in particular,
by those parents who care to reap the benefits of joining
that journey.
Oz and Mona Hanley
New York, New York
oz@hanleygoble.com
Copyright © 2004,
Woodbury Reports, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
(This article may not be reproduced without written approval of the publisher.)
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