Drug Abuse - Parent Center

• What are the signs and symptoms of drug use?
• How does a parent prevent a child from using drugs?
• How do you talk to your kids about drugs?
• What are the most successful methods of drug prevention?
• What should you do if your teen is using drugs?

These are just a few of the questions parents are faced with today. Our mission is to provide parents with useful information and effective methods for keeping their kids away from drugs.

Reaching Our Children Before It’s Too Late

Kids today are flooded with false information about drugs, faced with peer pressure and various media influences. The message kids receive today is that of the quick fix, less effort is better, and that one should not have to work hard for what they desire in life. This often leaves them with little ambition and a feeling that there is no game in life. Drugs can be used as a solution to boredom and the hopelessness they often feel. The risk-taking and the effects of the drugs themselves make life exciting again – at least for a short time.

Advertising worldwide pounds them daily with messages to drink beer, smoke cigarettes, to solve any pain, discomfort, inability to sleep, or any emotional or physical problem with some medication instantly and at once with drugs. They see drugs and alcohol being used all around them, but are being told that “they” shouldn’t try drugs. In the United States, the average age a young person is exposed to street drugs being tried or abuse of medical drugs is eight years old (the third grade). This could happen even earlier if the child has grown up in a family that abuses alcohol or medications on a regular basis. Helping children to reach a sane and self-determined understanding of the truths about alcohol and other drugs can save them and the world enormous future trouble.

A full understanding of what drugs are really doing to a person and the long-term consequences, allows kids to weigh their options and come to a rational decision about them. The key to this is providing them with the correct information, but also in such a way that it relates to their world and their experiences.