Home » Education » Life Skills Life Skills Home  Academics  Work  Life Skills Too many young people leave home for college or work, but lacking basic independent living skills, such as managing personal finances, interviewing for a job, cooking, or navigating roommate relationships. No matter how academically or vocationally prepared, smart, or mature a young adult might be, a major deficit in life skills can prove disastrous. Since life skills are a combination of practical and social competencies, the best way to learn them is through experience. From the first day a student arrives at Fulshear, she assumes responsibilities that are designed to teach life skills. With mentoring and support from our staff, young women immediately step into household and ranch duties that include horse care, household management, meal preparation, and roommate conflict resolution. As students transition from Phase Two to Phase Three, they manage a personal and household budget, plan and shop for their own meals, assume household and campus leadership and governance responsibilities, and mentor new students. In preparation for their move to the Sugar Land apartments and Phase Three, students practice interviewing skills, prepare a resume, learn personal scheduling and time management, create a personal strategic plan for work and school. Phase Three allows girls to practice their life skills in a real-life situation, with the benefit of staff and peer support but without an externally managed structure to fall back on. At this point, Fulshear students are truly living independently. They are responsible, along with their roommates (3 per apartment), for paying their bills, managing finances, and balancing work, school, and recreation. Our mentors and therapists helps students work through areas of challenge, process the fears and anxieties of independent living, and work toward a balanced and manageable life. With the ranch campus less than thirty minutes away, students may transition back to Phase Two for a refresher or for additional therapeutic support if needed. During Phase Three, young women plan concretely for life after Fulshear, creating a vision for their future based on personal interests. This vision is translated into a personal strategic plan with concrete action steps to make the vision a reality. When a Fulshear student is ready in terms of hard skills, initiative, personal vision, maturity, and overall wellness, she begins the process of actually stepping into life after Fulshear-a life that she has created for herself.

Rewiring Neurons in Young Women with PTSD Therapists can help this neural "reprogramming" along by creating a safe, affirming, supportive context in which the young-adult trauma victim can explore past events but have a different emotional experience when they do this exploration. This helps the young woman re-experience previously traumatizing experiences without feeling overwhelmed emotionally. A Parallel Process for Treating Parent/Child PTSD It can be so difficult for a parent to process their child’s trauma that they may unwittingly minimize and deny the severity of the situation—it’s just too much to take in. When this is the case, parents may miss the forest for the trees, i.e. they may unintentionally ignore the underlying trauma in favor of a myopic, but perhaps less disturbing, focus on acting out behaviors that are merely symptomatic of the trauma. Their daughter's distance, anger, anxiety, and situational avoidance may distract the parent from the painful cause of these symptoms. Parenting and Family Life: Volunteering While many teens initially view community service as an unwelcome chore, it becomes a highlight for many students over the course of treatment. View All Current Topics First Name Last Name Email Phone Daughter's Age I am interested in a: Private Consultation Fulshear Brochure Other (see comments) Comments