Therapeutic Boarding School for Girls 12 – 16

WELCOME TO

the therapeutic boarding school

Who We Are

Lake House Academy is a therapeutic boarding school, meeting the needs of pre-teen and teenage girls between the ages of 12 and 16. Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, our lakefront school provides students with a home-like environment and an optimal setting for healing.

As an accredited school through the National Independent Private Schools Association, we follow all academic standards for the State of North Carolina, fully equipping our students for academic success while addressing emotional and behavioral challenges. Lake House Academy has a unique approach to treatment, prioritizing academics without shying away from clinical therapy. Our holistic approach weaves research modalities and emotional and social development with sensory and cognitive processing.

Lake House Academy's Family System Approach

Our family system approach personalizes care for each girl and their family to better heal and prepare your daughter for healthier behavior and relationships, with your support, in the future.

We restore connections through our family system program, with treatment that includes:

An Attachment Based Assessment, at the beginning of treatment which helps create a customized plan focused on healing your family’s unique struggles
Family System interventions including weekly family sessions through videoconferencing weekly as well as quarterly parent workshops
Frequent monitoring of your daughter and family’s health and progress, on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis

Our first priority is to make your daughter and family healthy, through this parallel process to healing and growth, which occurs at Lake House.

With our family system approach and support, your daughter can heal and you can deepen your connection with her.

Who is a Lake House Student?

We understand how scary it can be to think about sending your young daughter away for help. Lake House Academy’s exclusive focus on girls between the ages of 12-16, allows us to adapt all aspects, especially clinically, to the needs of our young girls’ developing brains.

You may have noticed that your daughter often acts before thinking, struggles with mood regulation, has maladaptive social behaviors, and has “fight or flight”-type responses. These behaviors are common in pre-adolescence and early adolescence because this age group relies heavily on the “limbic”, or primitive/emotional, center of the brain.

Attachments are formed in the limbic part of the brain. Adoption, trauma, and other events big or small can prevent your daughter from forming a secure attachment style. Without secure attachment, your daughter is likely to experience difficulty in relationships, anxiety, loneliness, low self-worth, and other related challenges.

Our approach at Lake House is tailored to intervening at the limbic level. Our clinical model, which includes Theraplay and attachment-focused therapy, allows us to support girls struggling with:

Attachment struggles, including adoption
Anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders
Social anxiety, challenging peer relationships
Trauma
Grief and loss
ADHD and similar disorders

While these challenges can seem insurmountable for both your daughter and your family, we can help your daughter heal from these struggles in a way that makes sense to her now, and prepares her for healthy relationships and behaviors in the future.

Lake House Academy - Therapeutic Boarding School

Letter from the Executive Director -

I know that life’s not easy when you’re looking for out of home care for your young daughter. You’re probably overwhelmed by feelings of doubt, fear, stress, and guilt. I’ve worked with girls like yours for many years, and I know that they are fun, talented, smart, wonderful girls. I also know that they can be really hard. Parenting is never easy, but it doesn’t have to be this difficult.

I want to express to you in this challenging time that there is hope for your daughter and your family. We can help you, like we’ve helped hundreds of other families, to heal from unhealthy attachment styles and improve your relationship with your daughter. And it can happen in a fun, safe environment. We believe in letting kids be kids. Your daughter can play and truly enjoy her time on campus while doing her healing work.

I invite you to come visit us at Lake House Academy. Take a tour and meet the people who would be working with your daughter, experience the program, and get a feel for how your daughter would do in the environment.

Whether or not we’re the best fit for your family, I wish you the best on this difficult journey. There is hope for your daughter. Our admissions team is standing by at [email protected]com and ready to answer any questions you may have.

Warmly,
Corey Hickman, Executive Director

"... More free play for children would reduce the incidence of ADHD. Any therapist who can capture the therapeutic moment in mutually shared play episodes will have brought the client to the gateway of happy living"
WILL YOUR DAUGHTER GET BETTER?
Our answer at Lake House is a resounding
Lake House Academy has been committed to helping middle-school age girls since 2010. Based on our most recent outcomes report, 91% of all Lake House Academy students report that they no longer struggle with the primary issue that prompted treatment at discharge.
"As much as I wanted to go home and didn’t want to be “sent away”, this place really helped me and I made friends that I hope will always be my friend."
Lake House Academy is truly a very special place and it’s the amazingly talented and dedicated team of professionals who are there to help that make it so!
Lake House Academy has already after just 3 months had such a positive impact on our family. Yes, family, it is a parallel process to healing and growth. Their caregivers are truly caregivers.

When you enroll at Lake House Academy, here you will get:

Customized healing for your whole family, not just your daughter.

Your daughter’s emotional struggles have affected your whole family, and so the healing process shouldn’t only focus on your daughter. Through use of an Attachment Based assessment and our outcome tools, we will create a customized family assessment and treatment plan focused on healing your family’s unique struggles.

Your involvement doesn’t end with the assessment & planning. We involve you in every step of your daughter’s healing journey, from weekly family system sessions via video conferencing to parent visits and an in-home study, our first priority is making your family healthy. We rigorously embrace outcomes and use our outcome tools to monitor your family’s health and progress on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. We’ll even follow up with you years after graduating from our program to ensure that our treatment was successful.

Click here to learn more about our success rates

Your daughter caught up to her appropriate developmental, emotional, and academic level.

We’ll help your daughter fill in the missing gaps in her development. We specialize in helping with:

Emotional Development

Using our developmentally-sensitive attachment model to help her grow in the way that’s appropriate for her age

Healthy Relationships

Connection through play
Our staff engage in coregulation with students and provide healthy nurturing
Freedom to grow, play, and heal

Academic Readiness

We are a therapeutic boarding school, which means that our academics follow high standards that prepare your daughter to return to a traditional school

A solid foundation for your daughter’s future.

We'll help your daughter fill in the missing gaps in her development. We specialize with:

Essential life skills such as regulating emotions, balancing relationships with work and play, and social skills
High quality, accredited education
In-depth therapy to help your daughter fully worth through the issues holding her back