talking to your child about drugs and alcohol

mommatomany · #1 (**permalink**) 02-26-2009, 2:16 PM

for me, all of my kids know about the dangers of smoking, as we just watched my father die from lung cancer, so it was a teachable moment, i guess. the older kids have been talked to about the others. we have talked about it being an expensive habit, a hard habit to break, something that impairs your judgement, something that can effect the way you look and smell, and neither thing is seen in our home. we start talking to our kids about 8...although i'd be willing to start sooner with the next ones if it seemed appropriate.

at what age did you start/will you start talking to your child about these things? what do you think is important to touch on?

DaddyX · #2 (**permalink**) 05-10-2009, 2:25 PM

Hi Mommytomany,

I'm dealing with a similar issue at the moment with my 13 year old DD. Although, my problem is around hard drugs like Hash, Heroin and the like. I certainly won't be telling her its okay to drink and smoke (nevermind the health problems, its way too expensive these days) but I'm more worried about the harder drugs at the moment as there seems to be an awful lot of it around us at the moment.

What I have done is buy a book called 'Dying to Survive' which is the story of an Irish woman who got addicted to heroin at 14 years old, and nearly lost her life because of it. She also nearly lost her arms before that, because she had been injecting so much drugs into her arm.

What' good about the book is that its got a really grizzly picture of the lady (Rachel Keogh is her name actually) and her arms before she turned her life around. The drugs had eaten away the flesh on her forearms. What I'm going to do is leave the book lying around and let it start a conversation. I'm reading it at the moment, and if I think it is suitable I might let her read it to. I think this approach is better than getting preachy about drugs, because some kids like to rebel for rebellings sake.

Best regards,
DaddyX

Persephone1881 · #3 (**permalink**) 05-12-2009, 12:24 AM

I don't have any firsthand experience with this since my only child is only 5 months, but I'll throw my 2 cents in anyway.

As with talking to your kids about sex, I think talking to them about drugs and alcohol shouldn't just be a one-time thing. It should be an on-going conversation. And it should definitely be a conversation and not just a lecture on why it's bad. I think using books would depend on the personality of your kids... I can see how it would be really easy for some kids to look at things like that and just think "That won't be me, I can handle it."

skittles67 · #4 (**permalink**) 05-27-2009, 12:24 AM

Hello all,
I am new to this forum! so hello to everyone! LOL!
anyways, I have 2 teen daughters, one is 14 and the other is 17 going on 18 real soon!
it seems to the drug that teens in our area have been doing is now ecstasy! my older daughter likes going to clubs that are for teens her age, its soooo scarey! all I can do is talk to her about the damage drugs do to your brain and body, ecstasy is man made so you can die from taking just one dose if they mixed it with other drugs, all I can do is make sure to teach them to say "no" does anyone have any other input on teens and how to warn them about drugs.
Thanks!

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