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Reducing Risk - Understanding th Adolescent Brain
Posted by:Ken Sutton--Monday, March 30, 2009
Losing Your Teenager and Gaining an Adult - Part 6 of 6 Written by Lori (Orginally posted 3-10-08)
Posted by:Ken Sutton--Wednesday, March 18, 2009
I am a mother in a Middle-America, double income family that consists of my husband of 30 years, my daughter age 27 and my son age 21. I grew up in the inner city where I met my future husband in high school; we married after college and moved to the suburbs to start our family. This is the story of my son's drug addiction that started in his teenage years told in six parts.
I describe the events leading to my realization that I had lost my teenager to drugs and the steps I took to cope with that realization, get my son help, and rebuild my family with our new adult son in drug recovery. I am offering my story to help raise the awareness of the teen drug problem, to help destroy the stereotype of the drug addiction as being an inner city issue, and to share some of the lessons I have learned with the hope that they may benefit you and your family.
“So I grabbed for that oxygen, inhaled it till it hurt, I began the climb out of that pit, and I started to rebuild my life that included everyone and everything that I had pushed aside for years. And I found support and strength that allowed me to properly deal with my son’s issues. “
Part Six (click here for part 5)
As parents we all want to fix our child’s drug addiction and we try very hard to do so. In fact I spent years trying to fix it, to the exclusion of my marriage, my daughter, my career, my friends, and everything else around until the exclusions included my health. But I could not fix this. And any thought that I could was a denial of the truth and I was living in an illusion. And the more I tried to fix it the more we all sank into the co-dependency of manipulation and enabling.
But I get it now. We did not move forward as a family that included my teenage son, for he is a drug addict and he needed help. So I had to relent to others in his life that knew more than me about addiction, that truly could help him, and I must give him the freedom to accept that responsibility himself. And in order to do that, I must get-a-life.
So I started this end with the steep climb out of this pit that we all sank into. And I grabbed for that oxygen, just like they tell you as the airplane is moving onto the runway, “If air pressure is lost, all parents please place the oxygen mask over your face first before tending to your children.” And I finally understand that statement after hundreds of flights. I used to listen to the attendant giving these instructions and thinking she was crazy. Of course, I would take care of my kid first. I must ensure his survival and not be selfish for my own needs. But I learnt that if the parent doesn’t survive or is not prepared to deal with the child’s issues, neither would survive. And my family certainly had lost air pressure, and we were going down.
So I grabbed for that oxygen, inhaled it till it hurt, I began the climb out of that pit, and I started to rebuild my life that included everyone and everything that I had pushed aside for years. And I found support and strength that allowed me to properly deal with my son’s issues.
And who is there with us at this end? Again, I think who ever we need to be there; family, friends, God. They are all there, but our teenager will not be there. He has finally passed on and we will have finally placed the hope of him in our past. However, our emerging adult child is there with us. And we are there with him. However, we are different now. We understand that they are a drug addict; that they have a disease that is in remission.
And we all must work towards another end of keeping this disease in remission. So our relationship with our child is changing. We are still their parents, but they are adults now. And they are still addicts, and we are their drug abuse counselor first. Every interaction with them must be preceded with the thought process that will determine if our actions will enable this addiction and reactive the disease, or keep it in remission. Will my actions take him more than one day from the streets?
For we must never forget, that we are always their Number-One in either sanctioning the addictive behavior or condemning it. It is only when we have determined, in total honesty to ourselves and without bias, that our actions will not awaken this demon that will always live deep inside of them. It is then we can be their parent. And last, but not least, when we are finished being their parent, given them direction, executing all of those necessary responsibilities that parents have, can we then simply be their mother and father. It is only then that we can open up and allow them to just be our kid; For at that moment they are not a drug addict.
And what is our now adult child doing at this end? Hopefully, they are moving on into recovery, because the last thing we have done for them is to ensure they are placed into an environment where they can learn to cope with society, survive well in the outside world, and teach them to build a fruitful life within drug recovery. And they are surrounded by others who can truly help them.
And we must allow them the freedom to find their way with these new skills that they have learnt and now must practice. And I do mean practice. They are not going to get it right every time. So we still do keep a watchful eye for the danger signs and provide some level of guidance.
However, there comes a point in time that the best we can do is to not-enable and pray that they find their way. If we continue to interfere in their lives and decisions, they will continue to make bad decisions, because we keep saving them from their poor choices. I think this is the only absolute truth we have to hang onto. I do not know any sure-fired way to guarantee that they will never do drugs again or to be sure that they will always be safe. But I do know that if we continue to save them from poor judgment, they will continue with their declivity, downward on their descending slope. As long as we spare them the experience of the full scope of the consequences of their behavior, the longer they will continue the behavior regardless of how destructive it is. This is the power of this demon that summons them into drug use at any given moment.
And as always when we reach an end, there is a new beginning; A new beginning that will look different, feel different, and be very different. We now have our young adult. And he is maturing and growing, and he is finally starting to realize his dreams, and what a joy it will be!! It maybe new dreams, but we will be sharing them with him this time. And these dreams will allow him to grow and become the adult we always knew he could be. And we will all be there together as a family.…….Finally!
So our family is trying to get back to some level of normalcy now. And our home is quiet now and the tension is gone. We are happier than we have been in years and my son’s enjoys us, and we enjoy him. Well, most of the time we enjoy each other. After all he is still just 21, and he still has some growing-up to do, and we still have some parenting to do. But this parenting is the normal stuff, and it feels good! This is another thing that we have missed; Just being a normal parent addressing typical parent / kid stuff.
And I can concentrate on my work better than I have in years. And I now have up-to-date pictures of my son that I can bring to work and actually show my co-workers. That was a long time in coming, too. One such picture, he is standing by the water at South Beach Miami. And with today’s electronics, this picture is on my cell phone and is on my desktop computer at work. And I look at it often during the day with pride that he is doing well, but also in relief that I can see him happy, and he is not high. That too was such a long time in coming! So many times when he was in placement, I knew I was doing the right thing, but it was still difficult to see him so unhappy. Over the past several years, he was unhappy, belligerent, high, sick, etc., etc., and any combination of all of these things and more. Now I can see him happy, healthy, and clean. What a gift!
But even after all these years of dealing with my son's drug addiction, of facing what we must do to help him and doing so. Then seeing him emerge as a recovering addict and realizing how lucky I am that he has made such progress. Even after all this, I still struggle with the waiting for all of these teenage things to happen. These teenage events with my son that I looked forward to, that I planned for; this relationship with my teenager that I so wanted, that I still need; These events that I pondered over and planned for; These events that I counted on, took for granted; But these events will never happen; and this relationship will never be. And I had to accept that in order for me to have the focus to help him and then let him go into a life where he assumes responsibility for his drug recovery. Because that is the only way it will ever work. He must assume responsibility for himself and I must let my teenager go.
So during my workday, I make a point to look at his picture on my computer and deliberately stop and pause for a few moments to remind myself, and eventually convince myself, that this young man is my son, that my little boy is gone, and my teenage son will never be.
But there are times that I gaze upon my son’s picture; I sense the other piece of the mother deep inside of me that does not recognize this young man looking back at her. For her son is still 9 years old, and they have so much to look forward to. Surely he will do well in high school. He is a straight A student and he consistently gets accolades from all of his teachers. While maybe not his music teacher, since he can't sing on pitch, but he stills does fine for his limited musical ability. And he is always a well-mannered little boy in all of his classes. Also, he surely will be involved in school committees and play varsity hockey, because he is such a good player; One of the best and he continues to work hard at his practice drills. She has never seen such a young child have such focus and drive, so maybe he can get a hockey scholarship somewhere. But regardless of all the possibilities that will be and maybe not be, he will surely do well and have many opportunities. Also there will still be many chances to watch him play hockey, attend school events, plan parties and banquets, meet his friends, their parents, etc., etc., etc. There are so many good times left for her and her son.
So she grabs him … Swallows him into her arms .... While she still waits.
(This is the final entry of a six part series - our thanks to Lori for sharing her struggles with us in an effort to help us with our own)
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Losing Your Teenager and Gaining an Adult - Part 5 of 6 Written by Lori (Orginally posted 3-4-08)
Posted by:Ken Sutton--Wednesday, March 11, 2009
I am a mother in a Middle-America, double income family that consists of my husband of 30 years, my daughter age 27 and my son age 21. I grew up in the inner city where I met my future husband in high school; we married after college and moved to the suburbs to start our family. This is the story of my son's drug addiction that started in his teenage years told in six parts.
I describe the events leading to my realization that I had lost my teenager to drugs and the steps I took to cope with that realization, get my son help, and rebuild my family with our new adult son in drug recovery. I am offering my story to help raise the awareness of the teen drug problem, to help destroy the stereotype of the drug addiction as being an inner city issue, and to share some of the lessons I have learned with the hope that they may benefit you and your family.
“And I tried, to the exclusion of my marriage, my daughter, my career, my friends, and everything else around until the exclusions included my health. But I could not fix this. … And the more I tried to fix it the more we all sank into the co-dependency of manipulation and enabling. “
Part Five (click here for part four)
When my son was completing his stay at the halfway house and he was planning his future, we discussed ways in which I could help him. However he said, “I cannot take help, Mom. I must be one day from the streets to stay clean.” I was amazed at his foresight and further amazed that he refused any financial help. And now when we discuss any ‘help’ that I may give him, I make sure that I do not interfere with this balance.
Even though he and I have never discussed that moment again or his words, I force myself into that memory and replay it over and over again. I picture myself in his room, me sitting in the chair and him sitting on his bed and saying, “I must be one day from the streets to stay clean.” He got it. Now, I must remember it forever.
So, as we parents come to an end, so must there be an end to our child being a child. And we come to the end of supervising their treatment. We have taken care of them to the best of our ability. We have gotten them help, paid for counselors, worked the authorities to get them into placement, been there for them when they needed us, and we have been there for them even when they didn’t need us, certainly when they didn’t want us. They have proceeded through these years of therapy and placement, and they are growing older and learning. Our teenager is gone. It is time to allow the adult to emerge.
However, it is very difficult to determine what action we should continue to take as parents as our emerging adult moves forward into drug recovery. We will still be a part of their lives and still see them struggle from time to time. Unfortunately there is no absolute truth to what will work when dealing with an addict. There is no well-defined path to success. There isn’t even a path that is obvious, even if it isn’t a sure success. And there is no guarantee that there will not be dire consequences to whatever actions or inactions that we decide to take or not to take.
However, we do know what actions enable our child to continue to be an active addict. By the time your child is ending his teen years, you know all about enabling, because we parents have been on the front lines of our addict’s enabling. And we continue to be there. We will always be there. And our addict will continue with the addictive behaviors as long as we continue to enable it, because we as parents send a much stronger message more so than anyone else; For it is our actions that are coupled with the approval that all children seek from their parents. When we do the enabling it is far more devastating to our child’s addiction, because with our enabling comes an endorsement.
However on the other hand, our not-enabling is far more powerful, because no matter how old our kids are they still want us to be proud of them. They still want our approval, and they still do not want to see us disappointed in them. We are their “Number One” in terms of requiring acceptance of their behavior. And just as enabling is sanctioning their addiction, our not-enabling is a condemnation of their addictive behavior. So, we must stop giving approval to their addictive behavior no matter how slight the enabling is or our insignificant it appears to be to us. And we must allow ourselves to come to the end of this co-dependency between our child, and us.
So what do we do at this end? For us parents, I think we must begin to recapture the other parts of our lives that have been on hold for so many years while we were dealing with our kid’s drug addiction. Years ago when my son was in in-patient drug-detox for the first time, my husband and I attended group sessions designed for the parents. We were new at this process and our lives with our son’s drug addiction were just getting started.
The counselor at these sessions was also a parent of a drug addict. In fact, she had a daughter and a son, both heroin addicts. I remember thinking how terrible that it must be for her to have a child that is a heroin addict. That wasn’t my son. He just got involved with the wrong people and I just need to address this problem. Plus, my son would not do anything to jeopardize his hockey. That is his dream, and I will have this all fixed soon.
She also emphasized the importance of the parents retaining a piece of their lives outside of the issues with their child. “We must get a life!” she would say over and over again. At that point in time, I was horrified. How could she expect me to set aside my son for one moment? He deserves my undivided attention until this is solved, until the drugs are behind him. I need to fix my son, restore my family and I will not be selfish enough to be concerned about my life. I will fix this and I will do nothing else until I do!
And I tried, to the exclusion of my marriage, my daughter, my career, my friends, and everything else, until the exclusions included my health. But I could not fix this. And any thought that I could was a denial of the truth and I was living in an illusion. And the more I tried to fix it the more we all sank into the co-dependency of manipulation and enabling.
But I get it now. We did not move forward as a family that included my teenage son, for he is a drug addict and he needed help. So I had to relent to others in his life that knew more than me about addiction, that truly could help him, and I must give him the freedom to accept that responsibility himself. And in order to do that, I must get-a-life.
End of Part 5 - Come back next week for the final part
A brief preview from next week
“So I grabbed for that oxygen, inhaled it till it hurt, I began the climb out of that pit, and I started to rebuild my life that included everyone and everything that I had pushed aside for years. And I found support and strength that allowed me to properly deal with my son’s issues. “
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Active Listening Poem- author unkown
Posted by:Lloyd Woodward--Thursday, March 05, 2009
When I ask you to listen to me, When I ask you listen to me, Listen: When you do something for me, But when you accept as a simple fact that So please listen and just hear me,
and you start giving me advice,
you have not done what I asked.
When I ask that you listen to me,
and you begin to tell me why I shouldn't feel that way,
you are trampling on my feelings.
and you feel you have to do something to solve my problems,
you have failed me, strange as that may seem.
All that I ask is that you listen,
not talk or do- just hear me.
that I need to do for myself,
you contribute to my feelings of inadequacy.
that I do feel what I feel, no matter how irrational,
then I can quit trying to convince you
and go about the business of understanding what's behind my feelings.
and if you want to talk,
wait a minute for your turn- and I'll listen to you.
(If anyone knows who the author is, post a comment- thanks)
Getting hard-to-wake-up teen up in the morning.
Posted by:Lloyd Woodward--Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Consistency is the key to waking up teenager in the morning. Yes, we all feel that teens should take the responsibility to wake themselves up. In a perfect world. However, there are teens who would fail at this task; however, once woke up many of these will attend school and succeed. The following routine is designed to eventually help the teen wake up on his own or with a simple alarm.
More powerful than rewards or reinforcements is this: if you have the power to get your teen's behavior where you want it, just do that. If you want them to do the dishes turn off the TV that they are watching and insist that they do it now. If they violate curfew and if you know where they are, go and get them. Likewise, if your teen needs to be out of the house by 6:30 AM, then play loud music or loud annoying sounds at 6:00 AM. Give any other warnings you feel necessary. By 6:15 apply the stimulus. The stimulus should be something that causes your teen to wake up and rise out of bed. You decide what the stimulus should be. You know best what will wake him up.
What stimulus will work best? Only you know the answer to that and you may have to try a few things first to see what works best. However, be certain that you have something that will wake up your teen. This may vary from a hand assisting the teen out of bed, ripping off bed clothes, to delivering a small amount of water on his face. If your teen is a very heavy sleeper, you may need to resort to the latter one. No one likes to use water to wake a teen up; however, watching your heavy sleeping teen miss school and fail is not easy to do either.
High Risk Situations: Some teens wake up nasty. They may make threats or use other intimidating behaviors. The fear that generates buys them extra sleep time. Only you can judge the real risk factor. Ask yourself these questions when assessing the risk factors.
1. Has your teen hurt you in the past at any time at all? Have they struck you? Have they thrown things at you? If so, then you are at high risk and you may need to bring in help before you apply an effective stimulus like applying water.
2. Has you teen made specific threats to you about how they plan to hurt you? If so, your situation may be considered high risk and you may need support from professionals or family members before you attempt to wake them up with a stimulus as powerful as water.
Even if your situation is high risk it may be to your benefit to bring in support people and apply water, that is, if all other stimuli have failed or if you judge other stimuli to be pointless. If you bring in support people it is important that a parent applies the water when possible. Even if you can't do it the first time make sure that with support you are soon the person to use the stimuli to wake your child up. Gradually, you should be able to wake up your child by yourself without support people present. If, however, even without help you continue to be to afraid to wake up your teenager, then you have a different situation to consider. At this point, you are afraid of someone who lives in your house. You do not feel safe. Your ability to supervise this teenager is compromised. Perhaps, for safety's sake, there is a better place for your teenager to live.
The following is a standard wake up reminder protocol that a parent can use to guide the morning wake up. If you follow your protocol daily it should help provide consistency.
1. Have a time that you start the first stimulus, usually music or noise from an alarm clock or from some other source. The first stimulus could simply be a verbal warning from a parent. If your teen has a computer in his room you can try this naked alarm for an annoyingly loud alarm clock. It is free. I like the bugle music. You may share this with your teen and ask him which music will wake him up the best. Do this the same time every morning.
2. Go in five, ten, or 15 minutes later (make it the same every morning) and apply the second stimulus. This should be different from the first stimulus. Choose the second stimulus with your teen in mind. What will work? Is it a hand guiding them out of bed? Is it stripping off the bed clothes? Is it applying a bit of water to the face? Keep in mind that teens may wake up angry. If your teen has a history of violence then consult with a counselor or probation officer before you attempt the water and read the High Risk section above. The nice thing about the water is that you usually don't have to keep repeating it because it is the most effective wake-up. Don't use it if you can find another successful method. Apply the second stimulus the same time every morning.
TIP on implementing Step TWO: This is the application of the second stimulus. This is not the time to start a conversation. You are trying to get the teen, even though he may be asleep, to condition himself to wake up to the first stimulus in order to avoid the second stimulus. If you go in to chat at this point, this may interfere with the second application and you may be annoying your teen even more than if you just poured a small glass of water on his face or head. If you go in chatting when it's time to apply the second stimulus then you are conditioning your teen to wake up to the chatting not to the music or whatever you chose to be the first stimulus. We want your teen to eventually be able to wake up to the first stimulus (because on some level he knows the second stimulus is on the way) even when you are not there. Don't get in the way by trying a last ditch effort before applying second stimulus because he learns that he doesn't have to get up until the last ditch effort.
If your teen wakes up but refuses to get dressed and go to school, then this is a different problem. We will consider this in another post. Sometimes however, your teen wishes to lay back down in bed and try to return to blissful sleep. He may find another place in the house in which to sleep. Using more water may make it unlikely that he will choose his own bed as a safe place to continue to sleep. The beautiful thing about the water application is that if it is applied correctly, to the head and face, it is not likely that he will return to sleep. He may still refuse to go to school but at least he will be up and awake. Once awake do not allow him to return to sleeping because he will have his days and nights mixed up, causing this problem to become a vicious cycle.
1. First stimulus is ____________. Time to apply first stimulus ____________.
2. Second stimulus is ___________. Time to apply second stimulus __________.
3. Repeat Second stimulus at _____. Time to Repeat Second stimulus _________.
The repeat of second stimulus may be necessary for a teen who is awake but refuses to get out of bed. It may be necessary for a teen who tries to find another place in the house to sleep.
To read role-play on waking teen up click here.
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