Your teenager is moody, unpredictable, up all night and asleep all
day. They mope around the house, refusing to speak unless it’s to their
friends down a mobile telephone. They get on your nerves, you get on
theirs, you argue and doors are slammed.
Getting Frank in the war on drugs
Typical teenage behaviour? Or could it be a sign of something much
more worrying — that the son or daughter who just a few years earlier
enjoyed nothing more than playing with their Action Man or Barbie dolls
is now involved in the world of illegal drugs?
According to many sources, there’s a fair chance that your moody
youngster may well be demonstrating typical drug abuse behaviour —
nearly five out of ten secondary school children questioned by Scotland
Against Drugs in 2000 claimed they had been offered drugs, while 17 per
cent admitted using them, with boys more likely than girls to indulge.
Even the signs from government seem to suggest that parents must
accept that their children come into regular contact with all kinds of
illegal substances, with recent drugs education initiatives revealing a
steady shift away from the zero tolerance approach towards informing
them how to reduce the chances of harm.
Indeed, Westminster’s latest approach is a controversial £3 million
advertising campaign for a drugs information website,
www.talktofrank.com, which blends graphic information on how to feed
drug requirements and avoid the wrong drugs cocktails with quirky jokes
and even an agony aunt column. "Don’t mix Ketamine (a tranquilliser) and
tobacco", it warns. "If the ketamine knocks you out you could burn the
house down".
But for parents concerned about their youngsters’ likelihood to
dabble with drugs, it’s no laughing matter. Confronted by either the
hard evidence of their child’s habit or the crippling fear that their
moody youngster may well be tinkering with ecstasy, cannabis or cocaine,
simply accepting the drugs menace may not be an option they want to
consider.
For them, the statistics are chilling: 60,000 people have died in
Scotland over the past 20 years from drug misuse and there are currently
56,000 heroin users across the country. Use of crack and cocaine has
increased by more than 200 per cent in Scotland in the past five years,
while the number of babies born to drug-addicted mothers has
dramatically increased to one in every 56 babies born.
Even closer to home — and school — last November a 14-year-old pupil
at St Thomas of Aquins was charged by police for being in possession of
cannabis, while a UK Drugs Unlimited report of clubbers in Edinburgh and
Glasgow showed nearly half of them, mostly undergraduates and young
professionals, had taken cocaine.
And there may be further cause for them to be worried: from July 1
cannabis becomes a class C drug rather than class B, and punishments for
personal use become much less severe.
So where does it leave the worried parent who would rather not see
their youngster stumble through early adulthood and into prison, in a
drug-induced haze? And what if they want to guide their teenager away
from the drug dealer’s trap long before any damage can be done?
Unfortunately for them, trying to figure out whether their
youngster’s unsociable behaviour is just another annoying symptom of
adolescence or a warning sign that they could be tampering with illegal
drugs, is far from an exact science.
However, help for them could come in the form of a new programme from
Australia, which is said to have helped thousands of families there deal
with the threat of harmful drugs and sustained misuse.
How to Drug Proof Your Kids, unveiled at the Scottish Parliament last
week, is specifically designed to educate parents about substance misuse
through a series of community-based programmes led by fellow parents
trained by the organisation, along with drug education and child care
professionals. The first Scottish session is expected to be held at an
Edinburgh primary school in autumn.
"It may not be possible to stop children from trying out tobacco,
alcohol or illicit drugs," concedes Jacqui Foggitt, manager of Care for
the Family’s office in Scotland — the charitable Christian organisation
which has brought the initiative from Down Under. "But extensive research shows that parents can play a vital role in
keeping their children from long-term involvement in substance abuse."
The six-point programme of two-hour sessions covers key areas
including: the extent of the drugs problem; why young people indulge;
how to educate children to make "good" choices; prevention tools for
parents; learning to intervene and where to get help, and advice on how
to handle "relapses".
The package — which focuses on stressing to parents the need to build
a strong relationship with their children long before a drugs crisis may
even arise — was put together from a book, Drug Proof Your Kids, written
by Dr Steve Arterburn, who has a doctorate in addictions and runs
several clinics in America, and his colleague Jim Burns in the late
1980s.
It urges parents to arm themselves with knowledge of the drugs scene
— from how drug dealers prey on and befriend vulnerable young children
to street names for drugs — to become aware of support groups in their
area and how to deal rationally with evidence of their child’s drug use.
"Parents need to understand and respond in a way most appropriate to
their situation," states the programme. "To simply tell children who are
already casual or dependent users to stop taking drugs is naive. As is
lecturing young people that ‘all they have to do is say no’. It is a
much more complex issue, and there are psychosocial and health issues
that need to be addressed."
Blowing your top or finger-wagging is exactly what parents should not
do, agrees one Edinburgh parent with direct experience of a drug-abusing
son.
"I look back on how I handled it and there are many things I probably
did wrong," says the 57-year-old father who lives in the west of
Edinburgh. "I didn’t know what to look for, where to go or who to talk
to. I didn’t understand what it was all about."
His son started smoking cannabis 14 years ago at the age of 13,
although his suspicions were only really aroused when he noted evidence
of him smoking roll-ups instead of cigarettes. "I didn’t know anything
about smoking hash — I didn’t even know what it looked like," he admits.
"My son said hash was ok, most kids have either been offered it or
tried it by the time they are 16 or 17. What do you say? It was
tremendously difficult. I didn’t know what to look for and found I was
always second-guessing my son. Eventually it became much more serious
than hash."
His son now has a heroin addiction which has seen him spend long
periods in prison and left his father shattered. "He spends about 50 per cent of his time in prison
— addicts who take
drugs and then go out stealing usually get caught," says the father, who
asked not to be identified. "He has even run up a drugs bill while in
prison and then got into trouble trying to pay it back once he was
released by smuggling drugs back inside.
"The whole culture of drugs brings bewilderment, stress and hurt, a
whole selection of feelings. I’ve even had to go down to his dealers and
try to pay them off. It’s hard for the parents as well."
He believes the key to helping parents is encouraging communication
with children at an early age, gathering as much information as possible
and learning to identify warning signs — just the kind of skills which
How to Drug Proof Your Kids appears to stress.
"This is primarily a parenting course," explains Jacqui Foggitt.
"It’s about improving the relationship between parents and their
children with the emphasis on drugs." The course also advises parents on
how and where to find support and advice at local level and how to
support their child should they relapse by looking at diet, emotional
state and the issues which may have led to drug abuse in the first
place.
Paula Pridham, training manager for the programme, adds: "The course
is aimed at prevention, it’s about parents learning how to relate to
their children to put in enough protective factors so they don’t feel
the need to try drugs. It looks at building self-esteem, open
communication and making sure children are well educated about drugs.
And it’s about parents looking at their own behaviour and lifestyle."
Indeed, the most recent Scottish anti-drugs television adverts also
strived to show parents how they shouldn’t react, with two furious
parents wagging fingers and simultaneously shouting at their sullen
daughter after discovering her dalliance with drugs.
Alistair Ramsay, director of Scotland Against Drugs, agrees that this
approach is the wrong one. "Parents often get it wrong because they
don’t want to think their children know more about a subject than they
do. And drugs can be an emotive topic.
"We want to encourage children to look up and beyond drugs, rather
than wag fingers at them. Finger wagging and sermonising about don’t do
this and don’t try that often backfires."
Paula Pridham agrees. "Parents will want to scream and kick them out
of the house. They won’t ever want to see their child again. And that’s
the wrong way to handle it. They have to think about how they might
react beforehand, so that if drugs do become an issue they can talk
about it with their child in a positive way and not an emotive one that
doesn’t help anyone."
By Sandra Dick
4 June 2003
http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=618062003
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