Mitch's Tips for Parents

The Making of an Addict

First, what does an addict behave like? Addicts behave as thought they are the center of the universe. Ignorant of the impact they are having on others, they are self centered to the extreme, They often decide what other people should be responsible for while failing at their own responsibilities, They blame others for everything. Addicts have a huge emotional interest in things that may not even involve them. They live for the drama and emotion of a problem rather than resolving the situation, They also believe they have the right to destroy themselves or create damage and refute any one’s right to say anything about it to them (even or especially people who love them).

Some would contend that many of these traits are also found in a teenager.

I believe the immaturity of the addict state is a stage adolescents go through. But when a teen experiences addictions in the form of alcohol, drug abuse, romance, sex, the teen is stuck in this stage and has trouble moving out it. What can a parent do?

Many good parents are troubled with a young man who is having addiction problems. They know he is responsible for his actions but can’t help feeling that somehow they may be contributing to his situation. And they certainly may be. That’s why most remedies involve a shift in lifestyle. The earlier this shift in the age of the child, the better. Once a young man is addicted, these approaches are good but may not be enough to break the addiction. You may be saving a younger sibling instead. Or you may be saving your sanity.

Here then are contributing factors in lifestyle that you may want to look at. These feed and inspire addictive behavior.

1. How we treat feelings.
Why do we think it is okay to gratify our children’s feelings? How come we think that if the child does not demonstrate happiness, there is something wrong with them?
Feelings are the responsibility of the person experiencing them. They may not be an indication of anything the parent should be tending to. When we as parents are pulled and tugged to try and change or satisfy a young man’s feelings, we are beginning the process of addictive parenting…probably because of an underlying belief created by popular media which sounds something like this, “ If I just understand how he feels, I should be able to find a way to MAKE him feel better.” This is flat out wrong and impossible as well.

Every time we as parents take away the responsibility from a young man to care for himself, we are in the midst of addictive parenting. Parents should support our young men to conduct themselves well even while in distress. If you treat him better while he is uncomfortable, it is to his benefit to stay uncomfortable. When we stop everything and give more attention, we are saying this behavior will get you more of what you want.

2. Impatience and the hurry up world.
When we live a life that is so hurried that we treat our children like a task to accomplish we are being impatient. We are treating them as objects not as the child we love so very much. By allowing ourselves to be hurried through life, we teach our children to think and behave like addicts. The fixation on the current moment, rather than the long view, the urgency of the situation, rather than the evolution of the day, these are examples of high drama living. Plus living this way, the focus is on us. What we are doing and how we are doing it, become the most important thing. We hussle, speed and cut off our neighbors while our children are watching. Traffic in our way, red lights, street maintenance workers, poor or slow drivers inspire an emotional reaction out of proportion to what is actually happening. It’s almost as if we are saying “Don’t they know who I am?”

Not fixing meals at home and catching a meal on the fly at a fast food place (more on this later) allow us to keep the pace. The moments that might be spent fixing a meal at home and sitting down together to eat it, hold the unexpected exchanges that build relationships. Even to aspire to this once a week nowadays is a worthy and difficult goal.

3. Feeding them.
The food we give our children should be the best we can give. If we give our children any food that is not healthy we are hurting them. If we are relying on these foods to feed our youth we are feeding addiction. The symptoms may take years to show up but they will show up. Fast food is not convenient, it is deadly. Giving our children food that kills is not love but it may make them happy. Sounds like drugs to me.

Do your own investigating on what food is a cause of poor health. The number one enemy in my book is High Fructose Corn Syrup. It’s in Ketsup, soda pop, energy drinks…Giving our children high concentrations of sugar causes imbalances or energy that their body will try to get them to maintain unconsciously with cravings and withdrawal. Sugars are also what alcohol and flour turn into in the body. Alcohol use becomes part of this chemistry game and works on the unconscious level. He won’t even know why he is abusing alcohol. The old method of dealing with alcohol withdrawal was to give the patient does of straight honey to calm the sugar craving associated with alcohol withdrawal.

Alcohol is a depressant, but when it metabolizes into sugar it becomes a stimulant. Therefore, I drink to relax (depressant) and have fun (stimulant). You might as well give them speed, at least you will not be supporting their obesity problem which is one of the greatest health problems of Americans. Treating our children to a mocha is saying that stimulants are pleasure. Do you want to argue with who decides what stimulants your child should take? Personally I want the most extreme I can get and I bet your son is no different.

In short, fast food has become a way for us to avoid the responsibility of preparing and eating properly. Meanwhile it destroys the body. Every addiction has these same qualities.

4. How we support their dreams.
Dreams can easily turn into romance. Romance is a satisfying idea that can seduce a person into a kind of lethargic trance. You can recognize it because no effort is made to move closer to the dream. Your son will lose his sense of being alert or ability to “pay attention.” He can easily become like the alcoholic talking about what he is going to do someday, if he could just….. or the guy smoking pot while playing video games, sometimes he can really FEEL like a “Space Invader”.

When your child shares dreams with you, your job can be to discuss the work that goes into making that dream happen. Do not do the work for them. If they ask you to assist (help finding a resource or drive them to the judo class), assist. Don’t take over. Share the dream but let them do their own work in creating their dream into a reality. When they reach a deadend in a particular dream, encourage them to dream again.

5. Poor limits.
Poor limits are the hallmark of addiction. Someone has to say enough is enough. That is the duty of the parent. Useful to a child’s health is the practice of delayed gratification. The instant gratification phenomenon means that wanting something results in having it shortly thereafter. What happened to waiting? What happened to earning something over time? These concepts run counter to the addiction model of instant gratification. Employ them in your parenting. There are lots of ways to practice this as a child grows and all involve familiarity with the word no. No is a great response to a child wanting something now. It also works quite nicely with teenagers. In practicing delayed gratification, it’s also useful to set a goal, “Yes, I hear you want a dirt bike. How do you plan to raise and save the money to get it?”

Input/Output
Children are informational processing organisms. Life is input: conduct is output.
The behavior you model for your child is input. Knowing this inspires us to be healthy models for our children. But regardless of whether the models in their lives are healthy of not, a child’s perception of what has happened to them (input) becomes their definition of security. Throughout their lives, they attempt to recreate the familiar. That’s why addictive parenting can be so deadly in a lifelong struggle against addictions. It creates a foundation of security on which all other choices are built.

Posted by Mitch at November 2, 2004 11:29 PM