Calo Preteens
Calo Preteens achieves emotional and behavioral regulation through playfulness and spontaneous, connective experiences. The program utilizes dyadic developmental psychotherapy and a proprietary therapeutic model, an evidence-based and effective treatment for trauma and disorders of attachment, to restore trust and heal relationships. Nestled in the beautiful woods of Lake of the Ozarks, our serene and homey campus is an ideal therapeutic setting.
CALOs Preteen Program serves adopted children between 9 and 14 years old who are struggling in making and keeping relationships in all aspects of their lives — with their parents, their siblings, their peers. These boys and girls are emotionally unstable and have a history of developmental trauma, from their adoptions and sometimes from abuse or neglect. They are wounded children who are struggling to understand empathy, altruism, and how relationships are formed and actually work.
Their journeys and their families journeys will take time and require true change, change from the inside outor, as CALO says, from the heart first, with behaviors second. Such healing can only occur when relationships feel safe accepting, connected, trustworthy. The truly safe relationship is the ultimate wish for adopted kids and their families. And truly safe relationships cannot be developed in a system of punishments and rewards.
Unlike most other programs helping adopted children, CALO does not use rewards and consequences because they do not work with these kids. Level systems, tokens, points, time-out rooms, lists of earned privileges cannot create the deep, internal feeling of safety that allows these children to begin to see themselves as deserving and worthy participants in the lives their families want to provide for them.
Our goal is not to focus on the behaviors (with rewards, advice giving), but what causes those behaviors- their feelings. Going deeper still, what causes those feelings is the core self-concept.
Admissions Contact Name: Nicole Fuglsang
Email: nfuglsang@calopreteens.com