Jesse was born prematurely to a mother who used alcohol and cocaine together during her pregnancy. He wasn't handled in the hospital, his father Lonnie Sellers of Terre Hill said, and he got little, if any, attention or cuddling for the first 17 months of his life.

By the time Lonnie and his wife Carol adopted Jesse, he was diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder — a brain disorder that makes it extremely difficult to trust and to accept and give love. Children with RAD will try to alienate the people who love them.

Now 14, Jesse describes himself as "scared, defiant and so afraid of people getting close to him that "I did dumb stuff" — like stealing from his family.

"No matter what kind of counseling we went to … his problem continued. We tried everything," Lonnie said.

Then they found out about Bald Eagle Boys Camp. "I didn't expect it to work, and it was our last hope," Lonnie said.

Jesse and his parents worked through a lot of anger before he came home from camp 18 months later.

Jesse said he was motivated to deal with his problems because he wanted to get home and move on with his life. He knew his problems would follow him into his future if he didn't deal with them, he said.

The Sellerses now homeschool Jesse, who continues the camp's manual labor by working shoulder to shoulder with his dad, cleaning junk from the garage, emptying the freezer, building a pen for the goat.

Jesse and his dad continue to set goals for appropriate behavior just like Jesse did at camp, only his dad sets goals, too. Lonnie said he's been impressed with the self-control his son is showing and the way they are communicating.

"We have finally bonded," Lonnie said. "Jesse and I are father and son."

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For years, Tim and his mother couldn't have a real conversation without her son erupting into angry outbursts.

He had burned through several emotional support classrooms in southern Lancaster County public schools, his mother said, had spent time at an inpatient psychiatric facility and jail was looking like a "high probability."

Two years after being at the Bald Eagle camp, Tim, whose name has been changed for this article, said he looks back at the way he behaved and finds it hard to understand why he acted that way. The anger gradually went away, his mother said.

When he returned home this fall, he worked on his new goals: effective time management, getting a part-time job, going to church and getting a driver's license — maybe even joining the fire company. His college goal: meteorology.

"I feel like I have my son back," his mother said. "Tim has grown into a pretty remarkable young man."

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"Jeremy was born an angry little boy," his mother, Karen Brenneman of Oxford, said. He seemed to have childhood bipolar disorder, Brenneman said, flipping between hyperactivity and anger.

As a teen, he went to a residential treatment center three times, but the third time resulted in no improvement, so he was discharged. In spring 2005 Jeremy was in and out of the psychiatric hospital because of aggressive, out-of-control behavior.

Brenneman, a social worker who previously had dismissed the Bald Eagle camp because it doesn't allow the campers to be on any psychiatric medication, showed a camp brochure to Jeremy.

" 'Mom, I think this is where I need to be,' " she remembers him saying.

Brenneman had no doubt Jeremy needed to go to the camp.

"We had tried everything else," Brenneman said. "If Jeremy doesn't go to camp, he'll end up in the juvenile probation system, so we were sort of out of options."

Jeremy took longer than most to show improvement but eventually responded to the structure of the program and unconditional love of the leaders.

Adjusting back to his home school was difficult for Jeremy, now 16, his mother said. He felt stigmatized by being placed in a small learning support classroom. He screamed at his mom and punched in a few doors and walls.

He is refusing therapy or medication, she said, because camp convinced him he's just a normal boy with problems to be solved. She fears he'll never accept mental health help.

"I wish I could say he's where he needs to be," she said, adding he's still "so much further ahead" than where he was.

E-mail: lespenshade@lnpnews.com