Smack

Alternative title, How Much Do You Ask Your Kid?

I talk a lot about giving kids space, especially teenagers, letting them make decisions, even if they might be the wrong ones, especially if the decisions really won't make much difference in the Big Picture, and most don't, most are innocuous decisions.

But face it. Some are more innocuous than others, and kids will get themselves into very bad situations that they could have avoided had we only reeled them in, in time.

So I'm just going to throw out a little public service announcement here. It's summer, and the kids are home from school. They're going out late, breaking curfew, and sleeping late in the morning.

Even if you're up at 2:00 a.m. to get their scent, you know very well that it's possible your kid is smoking pot, or drinking, maybe even using cocaine or designer drugs, but by the time they get home, the look is less than trashed, less obvious, and short of drug testing, you rely upon what you see and hear, and face it, you're hoping for the best, giving the benefit of the doubt, wanting to avoid conflict, but more to the point, hoping there is nothing to worry about.

Closing your eyes to make it so.

And your kid is being a normal adolescent, not talking much to you except to ask for the car keys, especially ignoring intimate questions. So you're doing what you have to do, which is giving him or her space and time to grow up, to think things out, to decide the best way to go.

Nevertheless. I think it's worth it to ask about heroin.

Of course, within the guidelines of respecting boundaries, you still warn your kids about all of the other drugs, too, and about alcohol, and share some of your personal experiences (you must). You do ask questions, pointed questions, all the while giving space, not intruding too much, and respecting this growing organism's right to grow towards the sun. But if you don't ask, you don't care.

In any case you can't assume the only drugs out there are "soft" drugs. There's no good illicit drug, don't get me wrong. But there are the softer entry drugs. And there's heroin. And an overdose with heroin, or taking in bad heroin is a really bad thing, the end of the experimentation, the end of testing the limits.

When you ask, your kid will respect you more, maybe even tell you the truth, that it's out there. Why? Why would you get the truth? Because kids are scared, too. And it's your job, frankly, to scare them, so they can be even more scared.

Do they blow us off? Do they ignore us? Yeah, sure they do. But they still hear us talk, flapping in the wind; they hear words like, "I hear there's some bad heroin out on the street from Columbia and someone died, a young kid died from it. Is it going around? It's tempting, I know. I was a kid."

You can lie, here, about it having been tempting to you, or not even use the line. But if it is tempting to your kid, the kid will look at you like, HUH? And maybe be honest with you. You never know.

Just tossing it out there. For discussion.

therapydoc