Betty Ford program helps Springs kids cope with addicted parents

Mathew Martinez was heading straight down the road to trouble.

He was only 8 years old, but already, he’d been suspended from school for five days. He rarely smiled, and the slightest little aggravation would send him into a rage. Someone warned his mother that one day, he’d end up hurting her.

Everything changed a year or so ago when Mathew attended a four-day program that’s based in Denver but is coming to Colorado Springs on Thursday. Through the Betty Ford Colorado Children’s Program, Mathew, now 11 learned to deal with the source of his troubles: an alcoholic father who always promised to attend his football games, but rarely followed through.

“The program — I owe them so much, because they gave me my son back,” says Mathew’s mother, Denise Carrillo, a Denver-area social services worker.

The Betty Ford name has become synonymous with substance abuse treatment for adults, primarily through its main clinic in Rancho Mirage, Calif. But the center also has a program to help children ages 7 to 12 who are dealing with an alcoholic or drug-addicted family member, and it’s expanded to two satellite locations — one in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and the other in Denver, which started in 2002 with a donation from a Betty Ford alumna.

About two years ago, Colorado program manager David Meggett decided to bring the four-day program to Colorado Springs twice a year, to make it easier for families in Southern Colorado to attend. This year, he hopes to build up to three times a year.

“Unfortunately, with the soldiers coming back and a high rate of alcoholism, I think there’s a whole population there that could use our program,” Meggett said.

The program costs $400, but the Betty Ford philosophy is that no child is turned away.
“If a family can afford it, that’s great,” Meggett said. “And if it’s nothing, it’s nothing. We do our best to remove every roadblock.”

Parents, kids and social service providers all applaud the program for one of its most basic lessons, which teaches the children that they didn’t cause the addiction, and they can’t stop it.

“Oh my gosh — they do exactly what I think so many social workers would like to be able to do,” said Jon Whiteman, a supervisor with CASA of the Pikes Peak Region, who has referred more than a dozen children to the program. “They are helping children mend from these broken relationships that they have. If they get nothing else through to these kids, they want them to know it’s not their fault that their parents are abusing substances.”

The first two days of the program are just for the children, who do artwork, role-playing and other hands-on activities to learn about addiction, how it affects the body and how prevention works. They also learn that it’s not their role to take care of a loved one with an addiction.

“They’re kids, and a kid’s job it to have fun and be a kid,” Meggett said.

The third day is when emotions run high. It’s when the kids get to express to a parent, caregiver or other “safe” person how they feel about coping with a loved one who has substance abuse problems.

“It was a huge wake-up call,” said Lisa S., a Colorado Springs mother who did not want to be identified by her full name.

Lisa’s 9-year-old son ended up in the program after a long, difficult period a few years ago. The family lost a house to foreclosure and had to move to a small apartment, which meant getting rid of many of their belongings.

Amid the stress and depression that followed, there was a lot of fighting in the household — especially when her boyfriend would drink. The 9-year-old and a 17-year-old son were taken away by the Department of Human Services, and when they returned two months later, the younger boy’s personality had changed. He was angry, Lisa said. He started failing in school.

He told her how he felt in his letter to her.

“He didn’t like the fighting. He didn’t like me smoking cigarettes in the house. He didn’t like the drinking,” Lisa said. “I realized that when we were going through hard times, we weren’t thinking about our kids’ feelings. They were going through hard times also, and we were being selfish.”

Today, her son is 10, and, like Mathew, he’s back to his “little happy self,” Lisa said. His grades are up. There’s no drinking around the kids, she smokes outside and the family is closer than ever.

“This program was a way for our family to reconnect,” Lisa says.

The rave reviews seem universal, and Jerry Moe, the national director of children’s programs for the Betty Ford Center, said the successes have been backed up by a study that followed the kids for 90 days. Another study that will be done soon in Colorado will follow the kids for a year after completing the program. Eventually, they hope to do a longer-term study, but Meggett has seen kids who have retained the program’s influence long after going through it, including a 19 year old who showed up recently for one of the center’s annual celebrations.

“He’s at the School of Mines, and he’s doing well. He’s like, ‘Dave, I still don’t drink,’” Meggett said.

The program that’s held in Colorado Springs is one of three offered by the Denver center, with the other two building on lessons learned in the first one. Lisa says her son didn’t need the follow-up classes, but Mathew Martinez did, and the experience has made him even more of an advocate for the program. Last year, he appeared on a Nickelodeon special about being the child of an alcoholic parent, and he told his story at a conference in Vail.

“It’s a really fun program,” he said. “It gave me the tools to, like, help me talk about it, and I let it out, so it’s not bottled up inside. Before, when my dad wouldn’t show up and he’d lie to me, I’d get mad at my mom. Now, I jut talk about it with her or cry into my pillow.”