Drug abuse prevention starts at the age the child can understand and talk. Listening, understanding, establishing trust and setting limits and showing love by parents, are the ingredients of good communication, understanding and effective substance abuse prevention.
The one individual having the most impact on preventing a child from future substance abuse and addiction is the parent - usually the mother. Good and balanced communication between child and parent can help build the framework for a child’s positive social and emotional growth. This is easy to understand - kind of a no-brainer.
However, what most young mothers and fathers don’t realize is the importance of how they live and the example they set by their actions in the first five years. Instead, the focus is often on what the child should and should not be doing. This is tricky since parents often may not see much wrong with their own behavior and/or attitude and even if they are self aware, they may not make the connection with the role it could play in substance abuse prevention. The foundation of good substance abuse prevention appears to be correlated with effective communication between parent and child. Here are some guidelines that you might also find in Dr. Spock’s books:
Do you talk at rather than with your child?
Do you spend most of your time correcting your child’s behavior instead of listening to and trying to understand?
Do you balance your lectures with learning from you child?
In the pre-teen and teen years, the child begins to share less with parents and more with peers. This is normal. However this is a critical time for parents to listen and encourage the child to talk and engage and communicate focusing on the child’s interests.
With two parents working, there is less time and less stamina for good communication and once it stops, the child will tend to shape behavior and attitude based more and more on peer influence and pressure. This is normal as well but in many cases the influence is destructive. Negative charismatic peer role models can lead your child in the wrong direction and even into abuse of drugs and alcohol.
While some experimentation with drugs and alcohol is normal for teens, without positive parent presence and support and security, a child grows distant to the family and more inclined to model after negative peers. This can lead to dangerous experimentation with legal and illegal substances which sometimes results in full blown addiction.
In summary, good substance abuse prevention means listening to and communicating with your child even from a very early age.