My Turn: “Steering our children clear of addiction”
Kat Allen’s My Turn column ran in the Greenfield Recorder July 22, 2016. It highlights some of what parents of younger kids can do to prevent substance use.
Of course, I don’t mean to make it sound like this stuff [like locking up alcohol and hiding ’empties’] is all there is to substance use prevention. There’s the all-important emotional skills (how do you handle big feelings like anger and anxiety in healthy ways?) and social skills (how do you make a new friend, or say “no” politely to a request from a friend?) that we’re teaching them — intentionally or not — through modeling and teachable moments.
And I’m delighted to report that nearly all of our local middle schools are teaching this, too, by offering the LifeSkills program.
And there’s the super-protective-factor of the warm, caring, safe relationship that kids have with their parents. These are far beyond the scope of my locking cabinet in the pantry but obviously tremendously important to drug and alcohol prevention and just about everything else in life.
Kat Allen
In case you missed it, you can find the article here.