Parents need to be both vigilant and involved to keep teens from using

Published 1:55 pm Friday, March 28, 2008

Parents have heard the warnings many times before that drug and alcohol use during adolescence is risky and serious behavior. You may also have heard from some ill-informed professionals that you should somehow abdicate your normal parenting vigilance about substance use because being tough on this issue will cause more acting out and lead to more use of chemicals. Nothing can be further from the truth.

The majority of prevention and treatment experts agree that the greatest tool parents have to reduce the risk from youth starting and continuing alcohol and other drug use is the strength of their convictions. If you secretly hope against all hopes that you can keep your son or daughter from using and abusing during the teen years, you need to stand up and fight for that expectation.

In your gut you worry, wonder what to say and perhaps decide to say nothing. But your silence sends a loud message that “it’s OK to use.” You may have read articles from last week’s paper about the results of the recent Healthy Youth Survey that reports the same message about how youth perceive the Island’s view of substance use.

You may be thinking I live in a fantasy world — suggesting, as I do, that telling your teens not to use will keep them from using. But consider the other ways you parent. You warn your sons and daughters about all kinds of dangerous behaviors, knowing that you don’t expect perfection but believing that your children still need to know where you stand.

Adolescence is a time when testing the limits is the norm, but to test limits they have to know what the limits are. Without that direction, they are left floundering in the water, like our rudderless “Rhody” in Puget Sound.

Take time to prepare what you want to say. As an opening, try something like, “I love and respect you and want you to wait and not use alcohol and other drugs in spite of the unbelievable pressures on you to do it.” Say what you believe, what you feel and what you stand for. You may even want to share your own adolescent horror stories about the negative consequences of your drug use history. If your child says, “But you turned out all right,” be prepared to honestly tell them that you may have lost some of yourself, some friends and some potential along the way.

Acknowledge that you understand that these elixirs can make youth feel safe in their drastically changing skin, comfortable in stressful situations, powerful when they feel weak and hopeful when they feel despair. But these “rites of passage” bring life-changing consequences. The drugs they may be using are much more powerful and addictive, especially marijuana, which is many times more potent than what you may have used in your teens.

Dr. Robert Schwebel, in his book “Saying No is Not Enough,” says that “drug use shields children from dealing with reality and mastering developmental tasks crucial to their future. The skills they lacked that left them vulnerable to drug use in the first place are the very ones that are stunted by drugs.” Recent studies show that marijuana and alcohol use are linked to higher drop-out rates, poorer grades and increased potential for neuropsychological deficits.

Stating your convictions may not keep them from using alcohol and other drugs, but if they know where you stand and that you will love them in spite of what they do, they may be more open to acknowledging a problem and trust that you will respond effectively. Your vigilance may also delay the onset of first use, which experts agree is another powerful tool to reduce the chance for abuse and addiction in adolescence, as well as the developmental damage that can last a lifetime.

And trust that many of our youth on Vashon know they are in trouble and need us to notice and intervene. Every week some of them come to the Vashon Youth & Family Services’ Get A New Life Group that I co-facilitate with Hillary Hammond, a Vashon High School senior. They share their struggles and triumphs over their alcohol and drug abuse and addiction. Sober days are celebrated, relapses are confronted in a caring way and tears are shed over the pain these youth feel. At a recent meeting, one youth remarked, “I was on my way to get drunk and ended up here, and I don’t know why.” I have to believe that it was for more than the free pizza.

— Stephen Bogan, a therapist, also works at the state Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse.