Saturday, January 15, 2011

Kids' Drug Use Increases (Pt.3)

(Continued from January 8, 2011) ...... One of my beliefs in the rise in drug taking, smoking, and drinking, is the fact that our children are not as carefully watched as they used to be in the good ol’ days. As children, all of us knew that one slightly less-than-favorable act in our neighborhood probably meant that a few telephone calls would be made to the parents’ house!
Of course, the bottom line is this – our kids are drinking, taking hardcore drugs, and smoking marijuana at alarming rates! Yes, I know – we have to work harder than our parents did to protect our kids. We have to hide medicine, we have to hide alcohol, we have to keep checking on our kids to make sure that they are following the rules and expectations, and, yes, it can be quite tiring.

Keep a close eye on your kids, their Internet activity, their friends, their telephone calls, and especially their whereabouts when they are not in your home – you need to make sure that your child does not become one of the 20% of our kids who are smoking marijuana, drinking, or taking hardcore drugs. Also, be sure that you know what your kids are doing each day (and with whom!) between the time that school dismisses and the time that you get home.

Again, as I have said so often, nobody said that parenting would be easy. However, by watching your kids closely and putting safeguards in place, you can help to deter the negative behavior that has become so prevalent with our kids today. Remember, it only takes a few moments to smoke a marijuana cigarette, drink alcohol, or take hardcore drugs. 

Keep your eyes on your kids! Sure, they might not like it, their friends might mock you, perhaps even other parents might look at you with disdain, but the last laugh is with you and your kids when the day comes that you realize that your children have made it to adulthood without trying or experimenting with the evils or drugs or alcohol.

Also, please pass along any safeguards that you have put in place with your kids and I might use them in a future post. We’re all in this together!

Hang in there and keep up the great work with your kids!


Paul W. Reeves

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