Tag Archives: Teenagers

Wanted: A Handbook for Mothers

The thing about being a mom is that you never really know how it’s going to go until you find yourself in the middle of it. About a year after we were married, I went to the doctor because I had a daily case of mild nausea that just wouldn’t quit. She informed me that I was three months pregnant.

Still in shock the following morning, I walked into work as white as a ghost. After telling my co-workers, they laughed and said, “Oh honey! We’ve known that for months.”

Before I became a mom I knew babies were cute but I never wanted to hold them or get too close. I thought puppies and kittens were far more endearing. All that changed the minute I laid eyes on our first child. With this tiny miracle in my arms, I had discovered the definition of love.

Surprisingly, I was pretty good at the baby/toddler stages. All day long, I’d scoop them up in my arms and cover them with kisses. I could basically solve any issue with a cookie and a book. But as the years progressed, kisses, cookies and books were no longer effective problem solvers.

Our four children were boys with similar interests but individually, they were uniquely wired. Just when I thought I had the “Mom Game” figured out, the rules seem to change and I was back to reading the directions.

I have to hand it to our sons; they were relentless when they wanted something. One afternoon I was having an argument with one of them. We were standing in the kitchen and although I am unable to remember the contentious issue, I vividly recall that for every legitimate, rational answer I had, he had a legitimate, rational response. We were getting nowhere. Suddenly, in the midst of the yelling, I had a light bulb moment.

I quietly said, “You think I know what I am doing.” He looked at me as if I had three heads and said, “Well, you act like you know what you are doing!” “Exactly,” I said. “I am acting. I do not know what I am doing.”

My honest admission altered our relationship. From that day on, I was able to share the undeniable fact with all our boys that although I did not have a “Bonanno Mothering Handbook” to follow, I was giving it my very best shot. To foster a bit of empathy, I always added, “Believe it or not, someday you will find yourself in the same spot.”

Years ago I was playing in the yard with our boys and feeling a bit discouraged. Watching us from her window, my elderly neighbor came out, walked gingerly across the grass, leaned over the fence and said, “I wish I had enjoyed my children the way you do.” Encouragement is a beautiful thing. It’s what moms do best.

Whether we’re mothering our own children or the child of a family member or friend, once God plants the seed of a child’s love in our hearts, we will forever nurture, comfort and hold them in prayer.

And as all mothers know, we will also be periodically confounded and eagerly searching for those ever evasive mothering handbooks and directions.

Marijuana: What Every Parent Should Know

How likely is it that my child will use marijuana?

Marijuana use is widespread, especially among teens. Each year, the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan conducts an extensive survey of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders. The 2008 survey found that by the 12th grade, 43 percent of the students had tried marijuana, 19 percent had used it in the month preceding the survey, and five percent used it every day.

When should I start worrying about it?

Earlier than you might think. According to Dr. Karen Miotto, a professor at the UCLA School of Medicine and former director of its Alcoholism and Addiction Medicine Service, “kids are starting to experiment with marijuana at ages 10 or 11.” But the most important years come when the child leaves middle school for high school, says Joseph Califano, Jr., head of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. Fourteen-year olds are three times more likely to be offered marijuana than 13-year olds, he says.

Is marijuana harmful?

Marijuana has both short-term and long-term effects. Like alcohol, it can affect concentration and slow down reaction times. That’s an especially serious problem for teenage drivers at a time in their lives when they are experimenting behind the wheel. Traces of marijuana tend to linger in the body for several days. Those who use it only occasionally may be under the false impression they have “sobered up,” even though their reaction times continue to be affected.

Marijuana also affects short-term memory, making it more difficult to handle complex tasks, study, and learn, a serious problem for teenagers who should be developing the learning habits and working skills that will prepare them for their adult responsibilities.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, those who use marijuana frequently can develop “amotivational syndrome,” leading to problems including “not caring about what happens in their lives, no desire to work regularly, fatigue, and a lack of concern about how they look.” Dr. Richard N. Rosenthal of Columbia University recently put it this way: “The people who become chronic users don’t have the same lives and the same achievements as people who don’t use chronically.”

Can my child become addicted to marijuana?

According to a 1999 study of the Institute of Medicine cited in The News York Times, only nine percent of the people who used marijuana became addicted. (By comparison, 17 percent become addicted to cocaine and 23 percent to heroin.)

On the other hand, today’s marijuana can be as much as five times more potent than the product of the 1970s. “Now that people have access to very high potency marijuana, the game is different,” Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told the Times. There was a time, she says, when “people thought cocaine was a very benign drug.” With marijuana, she added, “it’s going to take some real fatalities for people to pay attention.” One 50-year old man interviewed by the Times said that he had kicked heroin and cocaine, but still couldn’t kick marijuana.

Does using marijuana necessarily lead kids to harder drugs?

Whether marijuana is a “gateway drug” is a source of some contention. One study by Columbia University’s Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, found that “children who use marijuana are 85 times more likely to use cocaine than non-marijuana users.”

But Dr. Alan J. Budney, a professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Vermont, sees the “gateway” concept as confusing. He says that “99 percent of cocaine or heroin users have smoked pot. So in some ways it is a precursor. The other side of that is that 85 percent of people who smoke pot only smoke pot.”

Yet if 85 percent don’t graduate to harder drugs, that means that 15 percent (or one out of seven) do. So it might be likened to a game of Russian Roulette with an old pistol whose barrel has seven chambers and one bullet. Experimenting with marijuana won’t necessarily lead to harder drugs, but it’s an experiment with an unacceptably high degree of risk.

How do I know if my kids are using it?

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) offers some warning signs that your child may be using marijuana. Signs that he or she may be high include dizziness and trouble walking; becoming silly and giggly for no apparent reason; having very red, bloodshot eyes; and having a hard time remembering things that just happened.

Some behavioral signs of marijuana use include withdrawal, depression, and fatigue; hostility toward family and friends; changes in academic performance and loss of interest in sports. Of course, as NIDA points out, behavioral changes can simply be a sign of difficulties with adolescence.

Parents should also be aware of such things as signs of drugs and drug paraphernalia, including pipes and rolling papers; odor on clothes and in the bedroom; and clothing, posters, jewelry and other objects promoting drug use.

Finally, know your kids’ friends. They are the ones most likely to initiate them into drug use.

Is there anything I can do to prevent my children from using marijuana?

You are the most important influence when it comes to your kids experimenting with drugs. A 2000 survey by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that “half of teens who had not tried marijuana credited their parents with their decision.”

How can you help?

  • First, become informed about what’s going on in the world of illegal drugs. Your kids most likely know much more about the current drug scene than you do, and you need to speak to them with the authority that knowledge brings.
  • Second, discuss the drug issue openly with your kids. Know the arguments for and against. This may be the most important debate you will ever have. The best place to discuss the subject is the dinner table. Your mere presence each night has a powerful effect on your kids.
  • Third, be a role model for your kids. When it comes to using any addictive substance, legal or otherwise, nothing speaks louder than your own good example.

Where can I read more about marijuana and its effects on kids?

A number of sites on the internet can provide you with all the factual information you will need to discuss the subject with your children. Here are three sites that you may find helpful:

White House Office of National Drug Control Policy

The National Institute on Drug Abuse

The Partnership for a Drug-Free America

About the author
Tim Lanigan is a retired speechwriter who worked at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration from 1998 to 2004

Give Your Kids a Life: Keep Them Off Drugs

There’s been a big change in people’s attitudes about using marijuana, and it’s a change that may affect parents all over America. One recent poll discovered that 46 percent of Americans support legalizing small amounts for personal use. That’s more than twice the percentage the pollsters found 12 years ago when they last asked the same question. By early 2009, 13 states had legalized marijuana sales to people with doctors’ prescriptions, and the U.S. Justice Department announced that it would no longer conduct raids on distributors of medical marijuana in those states.

What does this trend mean for parents? If the nation’s drug laws are eased, if law enforcement pulls back, that will shift most of the responsibility for keeping kids off drugs to parents.

It’s been said that fighting drug use is a three-legged stool: prevention programs to caution kids about experimenting with drugs; law enforcement programs to stop the sale of drugs; and treatment programs to help those who fall through the cracks. If drug enforcement laws are repealed, that will leave it up to prevention and treatment. And when it comes to drug use, there’s an old saying that is true in so many areas of life: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

One father, a magazine editor, discovered the truth in that old saying when his son, Nic, started using marijuana at 12 years old and then graduated to powdered and crack cocaine, Ecstasy, heroin, and to what became his favorite drug, crystal methamphetamine. In 2005, the father, David Sheff, wrote a best-selling book, Beautiful Boy, about the effects of Nic’s drug use and his frequent attempts at rehabilitation and subsequent relapses.

Nic Sheff told CNN that fourteen years after first experimenting with pot, he’s still trying to beat his addiction to methamphetamine. “I am isolated, alone, disgusted with everything and, most especially, myself,” he said, adding that he suffered from “bouts of wanting to throw myself off a tall building.”

Sheff’s stories are a good object lesson for parents with kids who are coming of age. The bad news is that kids start early today. Twenty percent of kids have experimented with illegal drugs by the eighth grade; by the time they reach the twelfth grade, roughly half of all kids have used illegal drugs.

The important years are the teen years. The good news is that if you can keep your kids off drugs until they are 21, you are virtually assured that they will never use them. That means that kids are at risk for almost an entire decade, and most of those years are spent home with the family.

If your kids reach 21 without using drugs, they will have had the opportunity to spend the most important years of their lives preparing for productive work and for building the kind of character they will need to lead their own families. On the other hand, if your kids slip into drug addiction, there’s a good chance they will spend the most important years of their lives, like Nic Sheff, in and out of drug treatment, focused on merely staying clean rather than preparing for life.

What can you do to keep your kids off drugs? When it comes to drugs, you may think that the main influences on kids are the movies they see, the songs they hear, and the friends they keep. There’s some truth in that. But surveys show that you are the most important influence when it comes to your kids experimenting with drugs.

A 2002 survey by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that many parents thought they had little influence in steering their kids away from drugs. But the teens themselves told the researchers otherwise. In a 2000 survey, for example, the Center had found that “half of teens who had not tried marijuana credited their parents with their decision.”

How can you help? Here are two suggestions that should guide your efforts. The first suggestion is to become informed about what’s going on in the world of illegal drugs. If half the kids in twelfth grade have experimented with drugs, your kids are in effect surrounded by the drug culture.

How do you find solid information you can use to talk with your kids about drugs? There are two good places to start. One is The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, a private group of communications professionals dedicated to helping teens reject drug abuse. Another is the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, which features links to websites that offer good advice and information.

The second suggestion is to discuss the drug issue openly with your kids. The best place to discuss the subject is at the dinner table. Your mere presence each night has a powerful effect on your kids. The dinner table is often the one occasion each day that brings together the whole family. The Center at Columbia found that teens who ate family dinners infrequently were three times more likely to use marijuana than those who had family dinners five or more times a week.

How do you bring up the issue? There are many things that can be used to initiate a conversation, such as drug-related incidents that happen at school, pop stars who enter rehab, or news accounts of accidents involving drugs.

How responsible are you for the decisions your teenage kids make? David Sheff looked back on his son’s addictions and wondered what more he could have done to keep his son away from drugs. Drug counselors, he said, tell parents that it’s not their fault. “But who among us,” he wrote, “doesn’t believe that we could have done something differently that would have helped?”

In the end, what counts will be the decisions your kids make. But if you choose to make the commitment of time and energy it takes to influence that important decision, you will have done all you can do to help your kids find their way to happy, productive, drug-free lives.

About the author
Tim Lanigan is a retired speechwriter who worked for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration from 1998 to 2004.

When Teens Know One Parent Will Say Yes

The Situation

We have been happily married for fifteen years and believe we have handled most of our parenting well, but now our fourteen year old daughter’s drive for independence often causes us to argue. When she wants to go to a party or to the mall with her friends, my husband and I react differently, in ways that surprise both of us.

Usually, she goes to my husband first for permission, because he is more likely to let her go and not ask for details. When I find out, I end up being the bad guy because I insist on knowing who she is meeting or calling the parents who are hosting the party. If I say she can’t go, she throws a fit, and sometimes my husband overrules me, right there in front of her, saying we need to trust her. I think he doesn’t want to see her disappointed, but then I am angry at him and worried all evening. I’m afraid my husband and I are hurting our relationship, not to mention setting a bad example for our daughter. What can we do to keep our marriage together when our daughter stresses us out?

A Response

All parents face the tough job of striking a balance between balancing privileges and safety. When one parent is more protective than the other, tends to think more vividly about the dangers that are out there, or is more prone to worry in general, a teen is likely to notice the cracks in the parental unit and drift toward the parent most likely to allow freedoms. To minimize the strong emotions and conflicts that tend to happen in the throes of decision-making, consider the steps below.

  • Set aside time to talk to your spouse about your mutual commitment to your marriage and to the job of parenting. Name the thoughts you have when your daughter makes requests (e.g., “I just want her to have fun,” “She’ll hate me if I say no” or “I just know there will be alcohol at that party”), and talk about ways to relieve that concern. Remind yourselves that your daughter and your relationship will benefit if you can present a united front about your household rules.
  • Consider your teen’s developmental level. Early adolescence is a period of insecurity for many teens. They want to be part of the group that seems to have it together and also feel fairly invincible as far as the dangers that are out there. Take time to ask what your teen is thinking, hoping and dreaming. Ask how she can participate at some level without endangering herself or causing you excessive worry (Face it: you’re always going to worry a little).
  • Decide ahead of time the basic permissions you are both comfortable with in a given scenario and promise each other that you will present decisions as a team. Let your daughter know the basic rules about parties or going out. When she surprises you with a new request, tell her, “I’ll talk with your mother/father about this and we’ll get back to you with our answer.” Then hold a private discussion with each other.
  • Work out ways to back each other up. One way to show your support for each other is to have the stricter parent go first – the one who is more likely to say “no” to a situation – and plan that the other parent will agree saying, “Your mother (or father) said, ‘no,’ and I agree.” If your daughter poses a reasonable argument, tell her you will take her statements back to the other parent for consideration. Again have a private parental discussion. If the information prompts a change of heart, allow the stricter parent to be the one to give the good news, to help balance the permission granting. Finally, agree that you will both watch for disrespectful behavior from the daughter and back each other up about that, too, e.g., “It’s not okay to talk to your father/mother that way, and here is the consequence…” Talk about hypothetical situations. This may reassure you that your teen can make good decisions in difficult situations. For example, during dinner, casually bring up scenarios you have read about in the news or heard about from friends – don’t mention names. Ask your daughter what she might do if faced such a situation. If she gives a reasonable answer, let her know you are pleased with her thinking and add any suggestions you might have. If she gives a less than satisfactory response, suggest a few things that could happen as a result and ask what she might do instead. It also can be interesting to ask your daughter what she thinks about the complete lack of rules some parents seem to have. Often, teens will admit they view overly permissive parents as not really caring about their children.
  • Building trust and character take time. Let your teen know that the more she shows herself to be trustworthy, the more trust you will give. Yes, you want her to have fun, but you also love her and thus, her safety is your top concern. Parents sometimes have tough decisions to make, but sticking by your rules, even in the face of a child’s unhappiness, is showing your love. Not bending to pressure from others when things don’t seem safe is a skill you hope she also will exercise as she ventures out in the world on her own.

Finally, if necessary, don’t be afraid to seek professional help. It is a sign of love, not weakness to seek help from a therapist or counselor who can help all family members voice their concerns, reframe the conflict as one borne in love and possibly fear, and move toward solutions that will work for everyone.

About the author
Dr. Madison is a clinical psychologist, author and director of FOCCUS, Inc. USA. She speaks internationally on topics related to children, marriage and families.

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