Fortunately for the many parents seeking help, much is now known about preventing drug abuse. What follows is the latest and best information on what you can do to protect your child.
• Early steps. A parent's actions even before a child's birth are critical to helping that child stay off drugs in later years. Drugs, including nicotine and alcohol, can cross the placental barrier and damage a fetus as early as three weeks after conception. And some research suggests that babies born to addicted mothers may be at higher risk of addiction later in their lives.
In addition, experts agree that loving attention is important to developing lifelong self-worth — and that lack of self-worth is a major reason for drug use. Long before your children are ready for school, establish family guidelines for behavior: honesty, fairness, and respect for others and for the law.
• First lessons. As soon as they're old enough to understand, teach your children that some products found around the house, including household cleaners, aerosols and medicines, can be poisonous. Drill it into your kids: Don't ever swallow anything new without talking to daddy or mommy first."
• Examples at home. Children five to nine years old still learn mainly by experience. They can slide from fact to fantasy and back again without even realizing it. What they see, however, is very real to them. Though teachers often achieve hero-like status, it's still what children encounter at home that counts the most.
• Decision-making. Now is when to begin teaching your children to make decisions on their own, and to impart "don't-be-a-follower" lessons. Parents should begin to teach their kids about peer pressure before they're seven, say experts. They have to be made to understand that just because someone tells them to do something, that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. If they're in doubt, kids should ask someone they trust.
• Monitor activities. Parents whose children are already teenagers should always have an idea of where the kids are going and who they'll be with.
• Lots of love. Adolescence is probably the most vulnerable period in a child's life, a time when peer pressure hits him with a vengeance. Their clothes are bizarre, their music funky. Hormones are bubbling and kids this age are curious about everything — and willing to try just about everything they think will make them look "cool."
However, kids at this age often feel held back by overprotective parents and teachers. This can create rebellious teens.
• Factual advice. An expert believes that mature kids need facts while immature kids need a balance between facts and penalties if they are going to resist the peer pressure and temptations around them. Most experts agree, however, that scare tactics are not the way to go.
• Setting limits. Many young people use drugs simply because their friends do. To reinforce a child's ability to resist, get to know your child's friends and their parents, and as already mentioned, monitor his or her whereabouts.
