How to Save a Troubled Kid?

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et the owners and managers of such schools profess a strong belief in what they do. Spring Creek allowed a TIME journalist to attend the parents' weekend and tour the campus, providing a rare glimpse into the daily regimens and conditions at one of these tough-love schools and an intimate look at the difficult choices facing parents who send their children to them.

Opened in 1996, Spring Creek is the largest WWASPS affiliate, with about 600 teenagers in residence. It is owned and operated by twin brothers Cameron and Chaffin Pullan, 33. Neither Pullan is a college graduate or has any formal training in child development. Cameron worked as a YMCA day-care administrator, and Chaffin served as a residential manager for a WWASPS program in Utah before starting the school in Thompson Falls, Mont. But the brothers pride themselves on their self-taught proficiency in rehabilitating kids. "We help build confidence," says Chaffin, "through character building."

Boys and girls dressed in khakis and maroon sweaters walk silently across the campus in tidy lines. Speaking out of turn is forbidden. All activities are directed toward correcting old bad habits. Tony Robbins' self-improvement tapes are played during meals, and the teens spend hours charting their behavior. Instead of receiving classroom instruction, they work their way through a self-guided academic curriculum. Residents who follow the rules move through the program's progress levels and are granted more leniency; those who disobey receive demerits and lose privileges. About 20% of the students are on behavior-related medications, prescribed by a visiting psychiatrist. Licensed therapists are available, at a fee beyond the hefty $3,085 a month it costs to keep a kid at Spring Creek. The average length of stay is a year, though the Pullans say it takes 18 months to complete the program. Every month, one or two kids try to run away. Although there are no fences, the school is surrounded by mountainous woods, and the nearest major road is 15 miles away, so they don't get far. Last month, however, a 16year-old girl who had arrived at Spring Creek in March hanged herself in a shower stall. The school says she is its first suicide.

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.