Whether you are a mother or father, watching your child become an addict is one of the most difficult things. Here is your baby, someone you nurtured and cared for their entire life, someone you have an unconditional love for, someone who you tried to give the world and anything their heart desired, someone who was sick and you cared for, someone who you’d give anything just so they didn’t feel pain. Now here you are, watching them suffer with addiction. It is something no parent wants for their child, something that strikes fear in all parents, something so difficult to understand. You begin to question their friends, their choices, your choices as a parent, what happened to make addiction the answer for them? How do you as a parent decide when and what to do with your child to best help them? How can leaving them stranded without money or a place to go be the right thing for a parent to do? You feel like you are abandoning your child and you’re not that parent. You still imagine your little girl with pigtails and bows in her hair wanting to be picked up or teaching your little boy how to play catch or hit a ball. How can that same sweet innocent child be facing a demon such as addiction and how can you just let them face that alone? You don’t have to.
Children & Addiction
Many people experiment with drugs but trying them just once can lead to a life-long addiction. That is why many people tell their teenagers to “just say no” or not to give into peer pressure, since teenage years and early twenties are when most people find themselves first faced with drugs. Most people think of these as their partying or experimenting years. Sometimes partying and experimenting become more, they become an escape from reality and ultimately an addiction to one or more substances. Today’s teenagers and young adults feel more anxiety and depression about their own futures than ever before. Parent’s are not always the first person that this age group turns to, because they feel as though their parents may not understand, but their friends who may be going through the same thing can help them more. Millennials are abusing prescription drugs at a higher rate than ever before in an effort to maintain a sense of perfectionism and normalcy. Children also don’t want to let their parents down and will try to do well in school, be successful at work, and achieve everything their parents want for them. They may try to use substances to achieve these things, stimulants to stay awake longer to study more and get more work done, but then they may need to use depressants to sleep. Once an addiction develops and they realize it they may not want to tell their parents in fear of letting them down. That is why it is important for parents to be vigilant.
If you think or know that your child is abusing stimulants the best thing to do is offer them support through recovery. Not all children will want to do that, they might not think that they have a problem or they have it under control. Talking to an interventionist can be the first step in understanding what your child is going through and getting them the help they need. Sitting down with an interventionist and talking to your child, to let them know what they are doing to themselves, their future, and to you and the rest of the family can help them admit their problem and ask for help. Explaining to them the way that treatment would be and how beneficial it will be can help them agree to it. Sometimes those suffering with addiction don’t understand all the ways that the substance is actually changing their brains and harming their bodies. They may not be aware of any dual diagnosis that can be deceiving them into thinking they need the substance. Letting them know that you will support them through recovery but not to sustain their addiction could be the small shove they need. Being reminded that they are loved and worried about can remind them that they are worthy of recovery. To learn more about addiction interventions click here.
There are different treatments available. Finding one that offers a family therapy is beneficial to both your child and you. Together in therapy, you can both begin to understand each other and their addiction. Talking to each other can help resolve past issues and design a new future with your child in recovery. Depending on your child and what they have available to them, they may need to live with you after treatment and that may mean you have to remove things such as alcohol from the home. You can make a plan on how you will help get them back on their feet and make sure they make it to their meetings after treatment. To learn more about addiction family therapy click here. Together you can get through this. For more information on getting your child help, click here.
Drug Rehab for Your Children
If your child is suffering from addiction and/or mental health issues, hope is out there. Recovery Ways, the premier drug rehab in Salt Lake City, provides a full continuum of care that includes family integration. This means we integrate the entire family into the addiction treatment process, to teach family members the intricacies of addiction and recovery. Pleas call 1-888-986-7848 or contact us here.
