Parent Tricks & tips
Do you have a “trick” or “tip” to add? Please send your tricks to edmondparents@aol.com
“After my son was kicked out of two school districts, I thought “well,” he won’t be going back,” so I let him test for his GED. he never finished enough credits to get out of the 9th grade, even though he should have been in the 11th. He passed his GED right away without even preparing the problem is, as soon as he had a GED, so many programs that could have helped him were no longer options! Thunderbird treatment does not take kids with GED’s. If he is in jail he does not have to do any school work since he is “done.” So many programs use obtaining the GED as a primary or major focus, and not having a GED is a requirement for acceptance. Students cannot start college until their age group starts anyway. What we thought was a good idea turned out to be a mistake.
“The doctors and psychologists did not recognize substance abuse in our daughter. Each time the subject of drug and alcohol was not mentioned, we thought we had dodged the bullet again. We saw all the signs - loss of weight, change in friends, loss of interest in hobbies, falling grades, change in dress and hairstyles and change in behavior. We wish that we had listened to the warning deep in our heart and contacted a substance abuse therapist when we first saw the signs.”
“If you make the mistake of enabling your child and cover the bad checks he/she has written all over town, don’t use one of you own checks. I did that and several stores now list me as someone they will not take a check from.”
“If you know you are going to have a confrontation with your child, take her to a public place, like a restaurant. This way there is little chance for physical and/or verbal abuse. In addition, the child can’t leave, you’ve got the car keys! It works for me.”
“When I speak to my daughter about the family rules etc. I always have a tape recorder lying in plain view on the table. This way, everyone is a little more calm and it allows for a better one on one discussion.”
“If your child is using, please take all your valuables out of the home, they will get stolen, especially your bank checks. Don’t leave your wallet or purse laying around.”
Hair trick
I ordered a hair testing kit from Home Testing. I read the directions and talked to the lady who cuts our hair. She read the directions and said it would be easy to surreptitiously get a sample. That was it. He came in and got his hair cut and she got the sample we needed. We sent it off. It can tell cocaine, meth, pot, and others for 90 days. His test showed positive for coke and pot. I don’t think we ever told him about this as we did not want him to go crazy at the hair dresser.”
If your kids come in with their friends, are particularly ravenous, giggle a lot and smell like burning leaves, suspect that they’ve been smoking pot.
If the door of your girl’s room is closed, she has friends over, and the smell of fingernail polish remover is very strong, suspect that they might be doing more than their nails.
If your child seems to be particularly attracted to non-washable magic markers or asks for white-out without a specific, very good reason, be suspicious.
If your child has a friend that gives you the creeps, be kind, but trust your instincts.
If you find a note from one of your child’s friends that is so awful that it makes your hair stand on end, don’t take your daughter’s word for it that it was just a joke. Nice kids don’t joke about drugs and explicit sexual behaviors.
If your child turns against church and begins to get cynical and rebellious about religion, even to the point of becoming fascinated with pentagrams and wearing black all the time, suspect drugs.
If your child becomes withdrawn, secretive, combative -- if he has a sudden personality change that is more lengthy and profound than just a temporary bad mood, suspect drugs.
If your child is always vague and secretive about his whereabouts and the activities he is participating in, be suspicious. If his need for privacy is extreme, if he gets angry when you question him, suspect drugs.
If your child starts smoking, suspect drugs. Smoking is just the tip an iceberg which can go much deeper. Smoking means that he has compromised his beliefs in one area and may compromise his beliefs in others.
If your child spends the night with a friend you hardly know, get a phone number, know the address, and get a very specific time that your child will come home the next morning. Be sure that the parents are HOME and that your child is actually spending the night in THAT house. One night I let my 13-year-old daughter spend the night with a friend and did not take these precautions. The girl’s parents had left town and left her alone in the house. She had a party with boys, drinks, & pot. My daughter came home in the middle of the next afternoon, because she’d been too hung over to come earlier. I had never been prepared for such a possibility, because I had never done things like this when I was a kid. Be prepared for the fact that your children may do things you never dreamed of doing yourself!!
Never let your child go out older siblings’ friends. Just because they’re older and you’ve known them since babyhood doesn’t mean they have any sense. I let my daughter go with her older sister and her friend. They went to a party. Stupidly, they told the other (older) kids at the party to take care of my younger daughter and believed that they would. What they did was get her drunk and gang-raped.
Never leave two 14-year-old girls at Frontier City on a Saturday night and think they’ll be fine because it’s a public place. Between the time you drop them off and the time you pick them up, someone else might take them on a joyride to unbelievable trouble.
If your kid is not interested in ANYTHING but hanging with friends, be worried. Kids that are functioning well are interested in ACTUALLY DOING things -- hobbies, sports, subjects, reading, TV and ACTIVITIES with friends. They actively DO things with their friends. They don’t just HANG somewhere. If you take them to the skating rink, for example: Are they skating? Or are they hanging around the sidelines doing nothing but hanging out with their scroungy-looking friends? Are they bowling at the bowling alley, or are they sneaking out and smoking and/or drinking with their friends?
Tips from a once-naive mother who would like to help others not to be naive. If I think of more, I’ll send them to you.
“One of our biggest mistakes was allowing our child off the hook. We would set rules but relent or try and make the punishment too easy.”
“I saw all the classic signs of drug use, loss of interest in dance, poor grades, new friends and constant anger. Educate yourself”
“I don’t even recognize my daughter. Continual alcohol and drug abuse has permanently altered her personality. I still love her but I don’t like her.”
“We were so excited when our son said he was ready for a treatment program. We sent him out of state and spent $4,000.00. He left the program early and years later we found out that he only wanted to go to treatment because a drug dealer was out to get him.”
“I now believe it would have been better if I had removed all alcohol from our home until our son was grown.”
“My child stole my personal checks and gave them to a drug dealer in exchange for crack cocaine. I had hot checks all over town. If you suspect your child is using, put ALL valuables in a safe place where the child does not have access.”
“Our son’s car kept needing frequent repairs, like wheel alignments and such. In addition, new dents, broken windows and tail lights were commonplace on a weekly basis. I later learned my son let the dealer use his car in exchange for drugs.”
“I am divorced and decided to send my daughter out of state to her father. This was a mistake, his new family didn’t want to deal with her alcohol problem and the situation got much worse.”
“If you consult a psychiatrist, make sure he/she is certified in addictions as it pertains to teens.”
“If you know your child is using don’t believe a word they say. They will tell you whatever you want to hear so they can continue using.”
“If your child is arrested for shoplifting, they are also using alcohol and/or drugs. Guaranteed!”
“My 15 year old son denied he smoked cigarettes but I knew he did. He also used marijuana and other hard drugs. If your kid is smoking, he is using alcohol and drugs.”
1. My son used to always point the finger at all the people he knew who did drugs and alcohol. Of course he told me he did not and would not. This should have been a clue to me that he too was a user.
2. My son was licensed and driving the car that his mother and I bought him the day after his 16th birthday. This is the biggest mistake we ever made. He had no strings attached to keep control of the car. We should have had very strong school performance requirements etc in order for him to keep driving but we didn’t because it was too convenient for us for him to have a car. He told us later during his first round of drug treatment that he began to get totally out of control when he gained the freedom the car allowed. Most drug counselors will tell you, as a parent, take control of what you can. Hey parent, take control of that car that you paid for.
3. Like my little drug user, your drug user is a big liar. Users work overtime covering their behavior. Lying is a big part of the disease. This disease is the Devil Incarnate. It will erode every precious aspect of your family and your life. It will shift the fault for itself to you as a parent. It will turn the unbounded love you have for this beautiful child into a weakness in order to suck you into actually supporting the disease. The longer you deny, the longer you wait, the more you and your family will suffer. The life will be sucked out of you, your marriage and your other children. Your using child needs for you to stand up and force the issue. Do not offer trust to your suspected user unless they demonstrate they are worthy. To survive this disease, you must develop strengths you never thought you had and you must come to the realization that this disease is not your fault. You did not cause it, your child caused it by making a series of very poor choices.
4. Learn about the physiology of addiction. It is becoming fairly well understood. Also, learn about all the aspects of the damage that a user does to his/her body including the emotional retarthtion that occurs. Your using child will be emotionally arrested at the age of onset of using drugs. When you eventually find out when your child started using, you will perhaps understand why your 17 year old is really a 13 year old in a big body.
5. If you want to save your child’s life, you must be prepared to repriortize your life, to accept some very brutal truths and to spend a lot of money. About $50,000 has been spent on my son’s recovery, none covered by insurance. This is a brutal, intractable disease, that once started, will be with your child for the rest of his/her life. The only hope is that their” moment of clarity” will come soon enough for them to begin to desire to learn how they can develop the skills to make better decisions.
6. Be prepared for failure. My son was in treatment for eight months the first time and relapsed the first night he was home. He is now in a very good relapse program and is totally self-supporting. He has no car, he rides the bus to his two jobs on which he spends 60-70 hours per week. He lives in another state and will never live in Edmond again. His mother and I send him no money. He has been forced into a survival situation and this has turned him around. He is discovering his own potential by being forced to. He is no longer the beneficiary of the parental gravy train. It makes me realize that we made it too easy on him as he was growing up. We should have been much tougher on him. It is always touch-and-go with an addict but good things can happen. Have faith!
