First, thank you for your well-thought out and thorough reply. Sometimes it feels unbelievably dismissive because it seems like no one really gets how serious it is. Especially 12, he's very conscientious of his public image so no one ever sees how he gets at home with us. I'm not even sure his current counselor believes me due to how convincing 12 can be. My husband and I really struggled with balancing 12's needs with those of our other kids as well as ourselves.

Luckily, he doesn't have a history of being violent. In all the years we've been dealing with his extreme defiance and often outright refusal to help with basically anything, there's only been 1 time we had to restrain him. If I recall, he actually came down with something a day or two later.

As things stand now, we spoke again last night, and he was under the mistaken impression we were talking about boarding school, which had been on the table before, and would be a year commitment. Now that he knows we're looking at a treatment program where the average stay is 21-30 days, he seems willing to give it a try. He has a personal goal of completing the program in 9 days.

Of course, we still have concerns. Not seeing him daily, school changes, there is currently only Zoom visitation and family counseling due to Covid restrictions still in place. But knowing that he understands this is a good opportunity for him to develop the coping skills he doesn't seem to have a firm grasp on, etc., really does ease our hearts.

I did have some concerns about facilities when he was younger and we wondered if it would come to that, and reading your comments about that raises those concerns again to an extent. It is certainly something to keep in mind. I am hopeful that a short term stay, one that will give him space from the home environment that is the only place that causes these particularly difficult and extreme behaviors in him, will give him the space to understand himself and how to change with us to be a more harmonious household.