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What would make a parent send a child to such an isolated place, where he or she has to earn the right to use ketchup, sugar or salt, where calls home are rationed and where the smallest infraction can result in a stiff punishment? The Carbens say they did it because they had tried nearly everything else. John, their eldest son and the third of their six children, was smoking pot, routinely ignoring curfews, lying about his whereabouts and erupting in anger whenever he was challenged. When his girlfriend gave birth to a baby boy, he dropped out of 11th grade to work but after just a month on the job was fired from his father's business for slacking off. He spent much of his time driving around town with similarly unambitious friends. Last year he crashed his prized Mustang after running a red light and seriously injured a woman in another car. Then in the spring he slugged his mother hard in the back for taking away his cell phone.
The Carbens had sent John to countless counseling sessions, two weeks of psychiatric observation at a local hospital and another stint in an outpatient therapeutic program. He was found to have bipolar disorder and was prescribed lithium, but he took the drug only sporadically. Desperate, the Carbens made the wrenching decision to send their son someplace that could impose the discipline they had been unable to give him at home. Mary found Spring Creek in a Google search for military schools. She and Randy were impressed by the "40 referrals" from ecstatic parents that the school sent them. "I didn't call any of them," Mary admits, a bit sheepishly. "I just trusted the program." The school's tuition was a real stretch for Randy, 44, who manages a demolition company, and Mary, 40, who supervises security guards at a chemical firm. But they agreed, says Randy, that "we would do whatever it takes for him to be there." They borrowed the money from Mary's mother and planned to pay her back by selling their three-bedroom home and moving in with her.
It took John practically all summer to get with the program at Spring Creek. He would get 25 points for good behavior (well on his way to earning brown sugar for his oatmeal as a reward) and then mouth off and return to square one. It took him three months to earn his first phone call from home. But he eventually came around and completed the two seminars necessary to qualify for the visit from his family. Their first moments after the group hug were awkward but, haltingly at first, they began to talk. Mary and Randy told John about the arrival of his sister Bethany's new baby boy. He told them about the school. "I hear gunshots in the forest sometimes. It's a little scary," he said. "There are a lot of hunters around." Still, the Carbens liked what they saw, the polite way he spoke. Even the two piercings on his left ear had nearly closed up during his four months away.