What Can You Do?

What can you do to help lower the risk of your children using alcohol and other drugs? You now know what places some young people at a greater risk than others for using alcohol and other drugs. You can reduce those factors because:

• Most things that influence risk begin early in a child's life.

• Most of those risks involve family-discipline, parents as role models, and children's bond to family and school.

What Do Great Parents Do

• Treat their children as winners.

• Communicate high expectations.

• Let their children know that success requires hard work.

• Provide a lot of verbal support: They praise their children's skills and efforts, and remind their children they love them.

• Give their children age-appropriate household responsibilities to show them they are an important part of the family.

• Know where their children are, and with whom are the children associated.

1. Practice early drug prevention Avoid caffeine, sugar, etc.

• Eat healthy and serve healthy food

• Don't be too quick to medicate

2. Learn about drugs and alcohol

• This subject is covered in a later article.

3. Prepare your child for a drug free world

• Explain how drugs work

• Listen to them about their concerns with drugs

• Help them say no

• Allow them to use you as an excuse to say no ("My parents will kill me")

4. Set a "no use rule

• Drugs an alcohol harm healthy development

• Parental abstinence

• Don't teach "responsible use"

5. Confront all drug and alcohol use

• Don't discuss when they are high

• Take intoxicated child to the ER

• Get professional help

• Be prepared for excuses, promises, threats

• Follow through as talk is cheap.

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