Teen Drug Addiction - It CAN Happen to Your Family!

Parents, Pay Attention to this Book!

The biggest parenting fallacy in the world lies in thinking that we can somehow protect our children by living in nice houses, in nice neighborhoods, in quiet little towns: by thinking the walls of our houses will protect our children from making big decisions! They won’t! Our children will make ALL of the big decisions in their lives. I simply cannot say it any more forcefully! If you have not yet realized that the decision about using drugs poses a threat to every single child, wake up!

Over the past 10 years as I have taught parents HOW to teach their children to make good decisions via my Parenting with Dignity curriculum, I have told these parents the one thing I know to be the absolute truth: “Your children will make all the big decisions in their lives, not some, all. When they make the decision about whether they will use cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamines, alcohol, or any other drug, you will not be present and therefore you will be unable to protect them. The person offering the drug will make sure you are not there!”

If you need a wake up call, and most American parents do, please read Christy Crandell's book titled, "Lost and Found". It will open your eyes about what can happen to you if you do not teach your children to make good decisions.

What our children will use to make those decisions will hopefully be what we have taught them. However, our failure to teach them how to make those decisions does not mean they will not make them! It just means that they will use ideas someone else has taught them about using illegal substances! And believe me, what some of the other people will teach them, is not what you want them using to make that life or death decision.

I wish that I could get every parent to read this book. My wish is that every parent would read "Lost and Found" at the time their first child is born! Then, maybe they could see, first hand, how the tragedy of drug addiction can strike any child who is not completely and totally well prepared with good decision making skills. Christy's book is proof positive that parents cannot protect their children with what the parents know. It is only what your kids know and use that can protect them!

Parents Must TEACH Children HOW to Make Good Decisions!

Living in a home with loving parents who have strong morals and ethics is not the same as teaching a child how to use those ideas to make good decisions! As I tell parents over and over, “Talking is not teaching. Telling is not teaching. What you are doing does not become teaching until you see change as a result.”

A Wake Up Call!

This book should serve as a wake up call to every parent who is raising a child. Most of life’s good decisions are made in our heads BEFORE we are in the situation. Our children are no different and they cannot be allowed to wait until they are in a situation like this family, before they are taught how to make good decisions for themselves based upon sound morals, values, ethics, and principles.

Hopefully this book will help parents realize that, without proper awareness and a sound plan for teaching their children, drug addiction, and the pain and misery associated with it, is a very real possibility for their children and their family.

Please read this book and learn from the heartache and pain this family experienced.

Then, please share the book with every parent you know so that they can be aware of what may be waiting for them if they do not act now to teach their children how to make big decisions.

Is It Ever Too Late to Become an Effective Parent?

An Extremely Common Question

Today’s topic is a question that comes to us almost daily, so I will offer an article on the subject. Here is one version of the common question that I received just yesterday:
“Many parents with preteens and teens are just now getting this information on how to parent effectively. For those of us having significant problems with an older child, is it too late to start with some new parenting skills?”

An Answer to a Great Question!

This is a real dilemma for many parents who go through the Parenting with Dignity Curriculum at a time when their children are a little older. Many parents who were raised by very controlling or ineffective parents, have only their parents as a model for raising their own children. So... they have futilely tried to control their child’s every action or immitate their parents ineffewctive strategies. Then, after experiencing some difficulties, they attend the first class and hear the common sense advice given to us by Dr. Cobb as he was delivering our first son. Dr. Cobb’s advice was to view the life of a child as a mortgage being paid off a day at a time. He advised us to look at our son at age nine as a half owner of his own life who must then be making half of his own big decisions!
That analogy makes real sense to these newly aware parents and throws them into a dilemma in raising their own child. They now have a child who is 8, 11, 13, or even as old as 17 or 18, and they suddenly realize that they have really not taught this child how to make decisions, especially not big ones. At this point they come to us wondering how, at this late date, they should go about the process of giving the child skills for making decisions for themselves.

It Is Never Too Late!

I always love receiving these insightful questions because it tells me that the parents are really internalizing and attempting to use the advice we are offering.

The Past Cannot Be Changed!

For me the answer to this question is usually pretty simple… “You can never change the past! Try as you might, you can never go back and undo any past actions! The only logical answer is to “draw a line in the dirt” that indicates an end to your prior parenting practices which may have been only to crisis manage rather than to teach! Start today and apply the parenting tools you have learned from this class with your child from this moment forward.”
“If you have made mistakes with your children in the past and you feel that you need to apologize, then do it! But… once you have apologized, stop looking backwards! Focus only on the teaching you will do today and on into the future!”
Then I try to empower these newly enlightened parents to start making some intelligent decisions for themselves! “You know your children better than anyone. You love them like nobody else could. Only you can answer the question of the best strategy at this point. Ask yourself if your child is mature enough to begin to learn right along with you as you begin your new and more effective methods of Parenting with Dignity!

Start Gradually!

Certainly it does not make sense to suddenly dump a whole bunch of decisions upon a child who has never been taught how to make good decisions! You would never put someone who had never seen a car behind the wheel and send them out onto the freeway for their first experience behind the wheel. To effectively handle a car they will certainly need instruction and practice. However, if the child is older, it may not take as much time to teach them because they may have other similar experiences to draw upon in the process of learning to drive. The same is true for teaching children to make good, sound decisions!”

Start Today!

The key is to start TODAY! Start teaching now! Every day that you put it off makes the job more difficult. Start teaching your children to make great decisions immediately. Start with smaller decisions: What time shall I be home? How can I get my chores done in time to get to the game? How can I save for my new cell phone? Then work toward bigger and bigger ones: What will I do about becoming sexually active? How do I avoid using drugs? Because of your late start, you may need to accelerate the teaching process. But the fact that the process was started at a later date might make it possible to proceed at a faster pace.
Certainly, it much easier to teach the process of good decision making if parents start when their children are born and teach the skills as a gradual process, but that should never mean that parents who did not start early should feel guilty or discouraged. All that is necessary is to start immediately and teach, teach, teach!

The only time you fail with a child is the last time that you try! Keep trying!

Messages of Love: Write It! (Part lll)

Writing Is Important!

There are some other very important things that happen when you write to your kids.

In one way, it shouts to them that you think about them even when you are not with them. If they are not physically present to see you write the first message, what those written words communicate is that you were thinking about them when they were someplace else. Do you think about unimportant people when they are not around? Yes! Repeated writing says that you think about your kids often, because they are important to you.

Write Frequently!

Write often, even if the writing is brief and spontaneous. Many times the best form of writing a parent can do is on pieces of paper that tell your kids where you were when you wrote. Write on pieces of paper from work. Pick up a piece of wrapping paper that identifies itself as being from work and write on the back of it. Tear off a piece of cardboard from a welding rod carton and write on a clean space on it. Write on office stationary, write on envelopes, and write on the back of invoice copies that have been discarded.

Writing Works with Teens!

One of the difficulties in talking to teenage children is that when you are ready to talk, they are just not ready to listen! Then, many times, when they need to hear what you have to say, you are not around! However, when you have written to them they can go get what you have written and read what you have to say when they need it. I know that has happened with our own two sons. I also know that has happened with many of the kids that I wrote to while teaching. Many of those former students have called or written to mention that they appreciated what I had written to them years ago; and, that reading it now, they finally understand what it was that I was saying to them back when I wrote it!

Writing Can Be Permanent!

Next, when you write to your kids it becomes permanent. It says the same thing today, that it says tomorrow, that it says next week, that it says next year, that is says ten years from now. What you write to your children will say the same thing as long as they keep what you wrote. We can insure that children keep what we write by modeling for them what to do with things that have been written to us. Let them see that when we receive special cards from them, we keep them in a special place. Let them see that we, as adults, occasionally go back to those cards and letters we have kept and read them. Help them to select a place where they keep special written messages. Get them a locking box or leather bound notebook or scrapbook. Show them how to keep the important things that have been written to them over the years. Model it for them! Save the important things that have been written to you and let them see that you keep what THEY write to you.

In doing this, you are allowing your writing to speak to your children over a long and extended period of time. Do you desire immortality in the lives of your children? Then write to them!

Increase the Odds in Your Favor!

When you have often written to your children about important ideas over an extended period of time, your ideas will have a much greater chance of becoming “the ideas that rule their world!”

Check back tomorrow for more tips on sending messages of love to your children.