LET'S COME TOGETHER AS FAMILY!
How to become a Nurturing, Loving Parent:
- Engage in regular Bonding activities with each child, including:
playing one-on-one play time with each child; create happy family rituals & fun traditions - Look for and complimenting the good daily in children. Avoid criticism.
- Use respectful family communication skills including L.U.V. Listening (Listen, Understand, Validate), respectful I-Messages (“I feel, I think, I need”); be assertive instead of aggressive; and avoid “Communication Boulders” – words and voice tones that harm family relationships.
- Make clear family rules, including “No youth alcohol or drugs use.”
- Set up a rewards system to teach & reinforce the good behavior
- Use consistent Positive Discipline – not lax nor harsh – with short, mild consequences and Positive Practice to teach the behaviors you want.
- Use good anger management and stress reducing skills
- Help kids make life goals & train them in prosocial skills
- Create order by setting up positive family routines
- Monitor teens & children’s activities & be involved parents
Youth Life-skill training to Increase Competence & Self-Esteem:
- Communication
- Problem solving
- Goal setting. having a vision for life; recognizing their power to do good
- Peer Resistance: able to say no to anti-social behavior, incl. use of alcohol or drugs
- Managing stress; calming their anger responses
- Identifying feelings; receiving criticism calmly
- Planning, managing time, doing well in school
- All these skills increase a child’s core self-esteem
STRENGTHENING FAMILIES PROGRAM
GET THE FACTS
FAMILIES ARE IMPORTANT AND NEEDED TODAY!!
“Strong families avoid many adverse outcomes: substance abuse, teen pregnancy, school failure, aggression, and delinquency.”
The well-being of a nation depends on strong and loving families. They have the job of producing the next generation of emotionally healthy, responsible, educated citizens who are addiction-free and prepared to maintain the physical and social infrastructure of society.
- Increased family bonding
- Increased parental involvement
- Increased positive parenting skills
- Increase positive communication
- Increased family organization
- Decreased family conflict
- Decreased youth depression
- Decreased youth aggression
- Increased youth cooperation
- Increased number of prosocial friends
- Increased youth social competencies
- Increased youth school grades
Our goal is that together Parents and youth practice hear-to-heart social skills involved in bonding (creating warm, loving relationships), setting clear, firm boundaries (rules against antisocial behavior, including drug and alcohol use), and monitoring their children’s emotional well-being and activities to see that they always stay in an alcohol and drug-free social environment.
Skill practice creates new prosocial habit patterns in the brain, which helps improve behavior, strengthens the parent-child relationship, and helps a child feel loved. This helps produces micro-environmental changes in a young person’s life that make use of addictive substances very costly in terms of losing parental approval and also losing privileges. Teen substance use then decreases.
REDUCE MALTREATMENT
Child maltreatment also decreases as parents learn better parenting skills, and practice stress and anger management techniques.
This group is also widely used as a universal primary prevention intervention as communities, schools, and churches offer virtual Discussion Groups in the evenings. By inviting all families, they also attract high-risk families without making them feel stigmatized.
Children are a nation’s most valuable asset. They deserve to grow up in a stable, loving family with nurturing caregivers who protect them from abuse, help them become their best selves, and stay addiction-free.
Addiction has a devastating effect on families and is a major health crisis in America. It costs our nation more than $500 billion a year in social clean-up costs and causes unimaginable human suffering. Yet most addiction begins in adolescence where it is easily preventable:
“The median reported age of initiation of illicit drug use in adults with substance use disorders is 16 years, with 50% of the cases beginning between ages 15 and 18 and rare initiation after age 20.” (American Journal Psychiatry 160:6, June 2003 P. 1041)
Fortunately, research shows most youth substance use can be prevented by parents who are well-trained in three types of skills. They are bonding (creating warm, loving relationships), setting clear boundaries against substance use, and monitoring youth’s activities to see that they always stay in an alcohol and drug-free social environment.
BRAIN HARMS
Adolescence is a critical period of brain development, and alcohol and drugs will harm their brains. Substance use also has a serious negative effect on other aspects of children’s lives:
“The younger adolescents are when they start to drink, the more likely they are to engage in risky behaviors, including using drugs… having sex with six or more partners, and earning grades that are mostly D’s and F’s in school.” (NIAAA Alcohol Alert, 1/ 2006, p.1)
Despite these alarming facts, in the 2018 Monitoring the Future survey, 30% of 12th-grade students in America reported drinking. In some states, teen marijuana use sky-rocketed.
We want parents and youth to grow in family relationship skills and refusal skills that keep children safe from both addiction and adverse childhood experiences (ACE’s).
When children are neglected or abused, suffering adverse childhood experiences, it negatively affects their developing brain. This puts them at risk for social problems, school failure, depression, delinquency, and substance abuse. This trickles down to the next generation.
Currently, one in 10 American children lives with an addicted parent, putting them at risk for ACEs and 40% more likely to use alcohol or drugs themselves. The ripple effect is huge.
ADULTS MUST PROTECT CHILDREN
Unsuspecting youth are being targeted by alcohol, marijuana, and nicotine product purveyors because they know if they can get kids addicted as youth, they will have steady-paying customers for life. These products harm young brains and limit their potential. All adults have a responsibility to help protect children from neglect, abuse, and alcohol, tobacco, and drug use.