Many parents do not like to think about it that their children try alcohol, drugs and cigarettes in school age.
But you can reduce the likelihood of substance abuse when you maintain good communication with your children.
You should learn new parenting skills or improve your skills to keep your children away from substance abuse.
Children attitude towards drinking, cigarettes, drugs and sex begin the home.
Children are temped to drugs, sex, cigarettes and alcohol in the earlier ages. Many children of age 11 and 12 are playing with baby dolls while some children at this age are having babies.
How sad it is in this generation, 12 year aged girls becoming mothers! Media, newspapers, and magazines are glorifying the lives of those who are addicted to drinking, drugs and being a single parent.
What positive parenting skills you have to use to reduce those negative impressions?
Parenting Skills to Avoid Substance Abuse:
- Start disciplining your child when your child is young. Disciplining your child makes him strong to stand up to peer and media pressure.
- You should keep lines of communication open between you and your child and get involved with their extracurricular activities, school work.
- You have to find out whom their friends are and how they are. If you can’t name four of your child’s closest friends, you have to get involved more in their life. This is one of the parenting skills required by you.
- Tell your expectations to your child in a positive way and expect them to live up to them.
- You should know what is going on in your child’s life regularly.
- Parenting skills are required to draw the line from watching your child too closely and where they should not be involved. To draw the line, you should know your child better, so talk to them, listen to them and guide them.
- You can find significant difference when you learn new parenting skills in relationship to substance abuse problems.
- Fathers are important in avoiding substance abuse. If fathers took part actively in parenting children, children became strong to withstand peer and media pressure.
- Improved parenting skills improve child’s attitudes about drugs, alcohol, sex and cigarettes.
- You and your spouse should stand together when teaching your children about substance abuse.
- Parents and caregivers should follow the same method of discipline.
- Some schools are providing substance abuse prevention programs to their students but these programs should be encouraged by the parents to follow by their children.
- You should be a role model to your children. To be a role model, parenting skills are required. If you smoke, drink and use drugs, you child also learns the same things and become a substance abuser. Children always watch their parents and imitate them. So, for incorporating better parenting skills, you should avoid substance abuse to keep your children away from substance abuse.
Parents can help curb Teen Alcohol Abuse by wasting no time signing a loved one showing signs of alcohol addiction into an alcohol rehab program.