Parents Are the Keep to Keeping Children Safe from Drugs

At a Drug Awareness Community Meeting held this week in the small town of Graham, Texas, a veteran of the substance abuse treatment field gave parents a message. The speaker, Bill Coombs, has over 30 years of experience in substance abuse treatment and currently works counseling teens caught using alcohol or drugs. Mr. Coombs’ key statement to his audience: Parents must set and enforce boundaries to keep their children safe.

“The job of a teen is to push the boundaries, that’s what they do 24-7 … So what’s the job of a parent? To set the boundaries and set them further back than they’re going to push. If you project on them that it’s OK to smoke marijuana but don’t use meth, what do you think is going to happen? They’re going to try the meth.”

Mr. Coombs offered the following signs of teen drug use:

• Decline in grades
• Dropping extracurricular activities
• Frequently tired
• Frequently late or skipping school
• Becoming withdrawn of secretive
• Changing friends
• Extreme mood swings
• Preoccupation with drug of choice, such as clothes or jewelry that symbolize drug of choice
• Being “out of place”
• Becoming violent
• Weight loss

The veteran counselor also stressed the importance for parents of not only understanding the signs and symptoms of drug use in their own children, but also understanding the long-term consequences of drug use. Drug use ultimately affects everyone in the community, not just those who engage in the behavior. Children, teens, adults, families, and the community suffer the consequences. Drug use leads to fragmented families, child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, overburdened community services, crime, unemployment, and health problems. (Source: The Graham Leader Online)

posted by Vee @ 12:01 AM