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Help Your Children Avoid Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco
There are many things you can do to help your children stay away from drugs, alcohol and tobacco.
Get Involved
Establish "together time," and make it part of your regular weekly routine for doing something special with your children.
Know where your children are going, whom they’ll be with and what they’ll be doing. Get to know their friends and their friends’ parents.
Supervise them, or have them supervised after school.
Learn to Communicate
Be clear with your children that you don’t want them using drugs, and will talk often about the dangers and results of drug and alcohol abuse.
Be a good listener, ask questions, encourage your children, ask for their input and not react in a way that will cut off further discussion.
Give honest answers.
Walk the Walk
Be a good role model, the person you want your child to be. Show compassion, honesty, generosity and openness.
Know that there is no such thing as "do as I say, not as I do." If you take drugs, you can’t expect your child not to.
Lay Down the Law
Kids between the ages of 11 and 13 are at high risk for drug experimentation. Despite their protest, they still crave structure and guidance. They want you to show them you care enough to set limits.
- Create rules and discuss them in advance the consequences of breaking them. Avoid making empty threats or letting the rule-breaker off the hook.
- Set a curfew and enforce it.
- Have your kids check in at regular times.
- Call the parents whose home is being used for a party to make sure adults are supervising.
- Let your children know that they can leave a party where drugs are being used by calling you or another adult to pick them up.
- Listen to your instincts.
Praise and Reward
Reward good behavior consistently and immediately. Express your love and thanks.
Accentuate the positive, emphasize the things your children do right, and resist the urge to be critical.
HOW TO BOND WITH YOUR KIDS
Whether you have a difficult or easy child, or one who is somewhere in between, the bottom line is that children who are able to bond with their parents, (Parents are not always defined by blood) especially their fathers, are often more emotionally successful.
No matter how uninformed, ill equipped and unqualified you may feel, parenting a child comes down to some very basic behaviors. All of which can be developed and cultivated. Remember that you’ll be this child’s parent for the rest of your life. It is never too late to parent well.
Empathy: This boils down to being able to walk in a child’s shoes if only for a moment. When your two year old gets a bump on his head and comes to you crying, it’s "Whoops, that hurts, doesn’t it." rather than "Stop crying and don’t be such a baby!" When your 14-year-old is grieving over the loss of her boyfriend, parents with empathy respond with "I’m sorry. I can see that you are hurting." rather than "You’ll get over it. I didn’t think much of him anyway!"
Warmth: There is genuine caring and a sense of being valued and loved by the warm parent. You show interest in the child’s day. You hang their drawings on the refrigerator and point them out to neighbors. You tell them daily that you love them and give them hugs and kisses. Even when you are down, you find a smile for your child. Even when the child has messed up, he is reminded how much you love him.
Genuineness: You are real, open and honest. You don’t say one thing and mean or do another. When you tell a child he is one of the most important priorities in your life, you can check your planner and see the time spent at his games, or the meetings postponed to help your son with a project. Your child learns to trust that you will follow through and that your love is not just words, but actions.
Humility: Parenting a child is one of the most important responsibilities in your life. No one has all the answers. As a humble parent you’re not passive and inadequate, but very aware how necessary it is to get to know your child, her uniqueness, her talents, her fears and weaknesses. When she wants to study dance and you looked forward to her being on a soccer team, you are daughter-centered rather than self-centered in helping her make a decision. What is best for her, not you?
Emotional Stability: No one is perfect, but to be a parent, who bonds with a child, you must be aware of your own troubles and be actively addressing them. If you are depressed yourself, or in a no win job, or hitting the bottle much too often, you won’t find the stability to guide your child finding his. Your job as a parent requires that you address your own struggles.
Spirituality: Parents need to have a sense of the meaning of their lives and live their lives accordingly. Parenting will challenge your beliefs and your values, so you need to get clear what yours are. Don’t cop out by suggesting that it is up to him to decide when he grows up. You are just as responsible for teaching him beliefs and values as teaching him how to read and write. In fact, research shows that a sense of meaning and purpose is more essential to his future than anything else you can give him.
Knowledge of Fundamental Life Skills: Parents need to learn and continuously improve on their basic skills in life, such as self care, communication, building relationships, taking and following through on responsibilities, having healthy fun, helping others and managing time and money. She needs to learn how to set goals and follow through. She needs to know how to express feelings and how to put her values in to practice.
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