Parents
This article concerning parent’s responsibility for keeping their kids off drugs should be required reading for Parenting 101.
It is obvious, with so many kids getting drugs at school (and dangerous ones too – like Oxycontin and Xanax) that many parents simply do not know how to be good parents and need some help before their children end up in a drug addiction treatment center. Otherwise, they would be down at the local school pitching a fit while enforcing strict rules at home.
A good parent keeps their child safe and provides a path for the child to walk towards a productive and happy future. No part of raising a child involves allowing them to be in harm’s way of drugs that leads to drug abuse. Negligence of a child is considered abuse.
One would think that it would not be necessary to point out such obvious truths. Maybe some of the parents are too doped up themselves to grasp their point of responsibility.
Hopefully for most it is just a matter of opening their eyes. Let’s keep trying.
“With the arrival of the new school year, a lot of parents may be thinking, “Oh, good, the kids are off the streets, out of our hair and safe in school.” Well, if you are hearing what I hear all day from your children about how easily they score drugs and alcohol, you might not be so quick to ship them off to class without a serious, heart-to-heart talk. You might even be surprised to learn the biggest danger of easy drug access is as close as your own home — in your bathroom medicine cabinet.
The recent legislation allowing for civil action to be brought against California’s adults who provide alcohol to underage teens is a good start at saving young lives, but the real protection has to start in the home. We need real conversations, clearing and cleaning out the liquor and medicine cabinets as preventive measures for potential abuse by our children.
I recently celebrated 26 years clean and sober. When I tell people that I was shooting up heroin when I was 16 years old, the look on their face is that I must have grown up on the wrong side of the tracks or in some urban ghetto. Well, that just wasn’t the case. I went to the best schools and had everything a kid could want, but it wasn’t enough. Privilege gave me a sense of entitlement and became a curse for me.”
