Book Excerpt: 'Addiction-Proof Your Child'

— -- Chapter 9Keeping Your Child Safe

Jennifer Moore was murdered during a night of clubbing in New York City. After her car was towed, she and her friend showed up at the car impound lot intoxicated, and the friend passed out. While the attendants called the cops, Jennifer bolted from the lot, which was located in a deserted part of the city. She was followed and abducted by a man who took her to a motel in New Jersey, where he raped and strangled her.

The 18-year-old had gone to New York from her suburban home without informing her family. When interviewed, Jennifer's father said that he knew exactly what he would have told his daughter if she had called him from the impound lot: "Stay with your friend and face the consequences of getting drunk and violating your curfew. You may get a penalty. You may get a lecture. You may get grounded. But at least you get to come back home."

It is common for children to mislead their parents around drugs and alcohol. Sneaking around without their parents' knowledge adds to the risks they incur. Ideally, you would prefer your children not drink, at least outside the home, but most crucially you want them to be safe. Balancing these two goals in a way that makes safety a clear priority is called risk reduction.

Risk Reduction for Your Children

Sometimes we are so preoccupied with preventing children from misbehaving altogether that we fail to take simple precautions to prevent their behavior from hurting them forever. Consider the many bad things that can befall young people using, or abusing, drugs or alcohol. Among the potential ways in which they can come to harm while drinking are driving drunk, perhaps getting in an accident; getting into a brawl; having sex while impaired; throwing up and choking on vomit; suffering alcohol poisoning ("overdose"); blacking out and perhaps being raped or otherwise hurt.

Getting drunk doesn't have to be dangerous if it occurs in a controlled setting. Frequently, the problem is not the drinking so much as the environment — which kids choose because it is outside the realm of parental supervision. But if they drink in a protected environment, a hangover is often the worst that can occur. So long as their health and safety (and that of those around them) are protected, they will have time to do better down the road. An example of risk reduction is a safe driver program, which provides adolescents with rides when they've been drinking.

An important message to your children is that they can tell you anything at moments of real danger. Had Jennifer's father successfully coached her to call him if she ever got herself into a difficult situation, she could be alive today. It is difficult to expect your kids to turn to you for help if they know they will be punished. You don't want to make it easy for them to violate rules you have set up for them. But you must still let them know that, when they face life-threatening circumstances, your only concern is their safety.

For your kids to protect themselves from risks, they need to be armed with real information about the dangers to guard against. Hopefully, this book has already taught you a lot about separating drug and alcohol facts from fictions. In this chapter I'll focus on the specific dangers youngsters — and you — need to be aware of.

Practicing Risk Reduction with Your Kids

Let's return to Betsy from Chapter 6, a religious woman who asked me for help with her daughter Leslie's binge drinking, which had left Leslie drunk and alone in a stadium parking lot. In that chapter, we considered how to question children in order to clarify their values. Now we turn to the steps Betsy needs to take to protect her daughter.

What's The Worst That Can Happen? Let's Avoid That.

Betsy said she wouldn't do anything that might encourage her daughter's sexual activity or drinking. "I can't support those behaviors — they violate my religious beliefs," she told me.

We discussed Leslie's recent, frightening experience. "What do you think would be the worst thing that could have happened to Leslie in that situation?"

"She could have been raped, and really hurt."

"Would you rather that happened than that she call you and ask for a ride?" Pause. "Not really."

"What if she were raped and was infected with HIV?"

"No, I wouldn't want that either."

"Or became pregnant?"

"Okay, what are you recommending?"

"What steps can you take to prevent these things from happening until Leslie becomes the person you and she want her to be?"

Among the solutions we considered -- which Betsy and her daughter would have to accept as reasonable in terms of their basic values -- are the following:

birth control pills

safe sex materials (such as prophylactics)

arranged rides following concerts and parties, or permission to call without penalty when Leslie and her friends were incapable of driving

instructions not to mix multiple drugs and alcohol

These ideas initially upset Betsy. But they disturbed her less than the possibility her daughter would be seriously injured or drop out of school because she became pregnant. Betsy saw that by doing nothing she was increasing her daughter's risks. When Betsy realized that preventing her daughter from being permanently harmed was her major concern, she was able to reach out to Leslie. And her daughter was better able to respond. As Leslie told her, "Mom, I thought you loved God and goodness more than you loved me."

Like Betsy, you need to go beyond your knee-jerk reactions in order to plan for real dangers and worst-case scenarios. You have to have those difficult conversations with your children in which you promise not to punish them in situations where they need to be rescued from serious danger. In Chapter 3, we saw that even the high school substance abuse counselor promised her children amnesty if they called her before driving when they were drinking.

At the same time, as discussed in Chapter 5, you need to be clear with your kids about your values. Even if you don't punish your children at that moment, you can use the incident to build an understanding about future behavior. To do so, you will have to steer between protecting your children and giving them a blank check to do whatever they feel like without facing consequences. Questioning them in a way that clarifies their own values, as I instructed Betsy in Chapter 6, is a good way to begin.

From ADDICTION-PROOF YOUR CHILD: A REALISTIC APPROACH TO PREVENTING DRUG, ALCOHOL, AND OTHER DEPENDENCIES by Stanton Peele, Ph.D, J.D.