Parenting 101

Lesson 8: Acting Out

Underage Drinking Or Drug Use

What do you do when you discover your child has been drinking or using drugs? You’ve noticed the changes in grades, the secretive behavior, the sudden bursts of hostility. The school or a concerned friend or parent may have told you.

The first thing you need to understand is that your child can no longer can be trusted. You need to check their room for drugs or paraphernalia. If possible, do this before confronting your child. If your child appears high, don’t get angry. This may, particularly in methamphetamine and cocaine users, escalate into violence. If there are smaller children in the home, it might be wise to have someone watch them, while you talk with your child. Another way would be to ask the School Resources Officer to meet you in the counselors office and have the talk there in a neutral place. If your child is seriously addicted, and meth and coke users are almost instantly, after the first use, arrange for inpatient drug treatment immediately. Heroin, speed and cocaine are seriously addicting drugs that require intensive treatment for any real chance of success.

Make sure law enforcement knows clearly you will not tolerate drugs in your home, and that you are prepared to take stern measures to solve the problem. If the child is placed in a treatment center immediately, have someone help you check your home and vehicle for any drugs left behind. Look behind toilet seats and in the tank. Check under edges of carpets and inside mattresses and pillows. Feel under shelves in bathrooms and closets, inside shoes, in attic spaces and floorboards. These are all typical hiding places for drugs and paraphernalia.

If your child has been sent to an emergency room due to overdosage of a narcotic, and you have a sample of the drug she has been taking, bring it in so it can be checked for contaminants and purity levels. This could save your child’s life.

Alcohol abuse is just as serious. A child who has been drinking is a dangerous child behind the wheel of a car. Don’t just pass this off as a rite of growing up. Try and find out how much your child has been drinking. Explain how addictive alcohol is and get treatment started for her.

These problems have destroyed many families. Don’t let that happen to yours. It takes hard work, determination, and commitment to help an addicted child. It changes things forever in many ways. One of the most difficult decisions you may have to make is not allowing your child to return home. If after repeated attempts at recovery, the child falls into deeper and deeper addiction and destructive behavior, the cost to others in the family may become too high. Only you will know when that point has been reached. For some addicted children, removal from the community where the addiction began is the only way for them to fully recover. If this is the case, love your child enough to let them go. They'll come back some day. Mine did.

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