IT'S A CONTROL THING

Parents Learn To Act, Not To React, When It Comes To Troubled Teens

It took about three months for Ava to lose control of her son.

In her perfectly manicured garden full of flowers and wrought-iron
furniture, she tells of the havoc drugs wreaked on her life and that
of her 15-year-old son, Paul (both identified here by their middle
names).

"His behaviour was crazy," she says. "I had totally lost control of him."

Ava noticed her son's drug use last December. By March she had him
arrested for assault.

He had stopped going to school and coming home at night. Instead, he
was smoking marijuana full-time and doing some hard drugs - both with
friends and on his own.

"I fell to pieces about this," Ava says.

Then Ava heard about the Parents Together group in Richmond and
decided to attend one of the orientation sessions. That's when her
situation was pulled up from its downward spiral.

"This program is like heaven on Earth," she says. "It has totally
changed my life and the life of my son."

Through the support group and the book, How to Deal with Your
Acting-Up Teenager, Ava learned to change her reactions to her son.

"I learned to act instead of react," she says. "I changed my attitude
from negative into positive and realized there are certain things I
cannot control."

What she could control, the program taught her, were the goings-on
inside her house. But it wasn't easy.

While she was busy running her own photo shop during the day, Paul
and his friends would skip out school and use the house for their
daytime drug use.

Ava told neighbours to inform her if teens were using the house, and
when they did last February, she called in the authorities.

Paul spent six hours in jail before he was allowed to return home.
But, even then, the behaviour continued.

Ava brought the movie Through a Blue Lens - about drug-addicted
residents of the Vancouver's Downtown Eastside - home for Paul to see
the ugly truth about addiction and she made him watch it.

Offended, angered and possibly high, he exploded and pushed his mom
over a table.

"He was swearing," she says. "Awful, awful swearing."

All night Ava thought about the fight. In the morning she made a
second call in to the police.

This time, she charged him with assault.

Police found him at his friend's house. They put him in a
detoxification program at a Richmond church for the night.

Paul eventually was sent to Outward Bound, a wilderness program for
troubled teens. He was put on probation and returned home to live
with his mother once again.

Ava says there are no quick fixes, but the pair are now on the road
to recovery.

"He goes to school and he comes home," she says. "Not always by
curfew, but at least he's coming home."

Parents Together deals with a variety of parenting issues, says
program director Stephanie Carros. The program helps parents with any
kind of teen problem work out their issues in a supportive
environment. In a group, she says, parents can see they are not alone
and gain the confidence needed to find a solution.

With Parents Together, Ava says she's learned to put the power
struggle to rest. Paul makes the choices and he knows the
consequences. She says that although he is still using drugs, she has
hopes that with her love and support, he will make the decision to
quit.

The support group meets every Monday night in Richmond and Carros
says they are opening a new group for Mandarin-speaking parents. The
next orientation meeting is happening Sept. 24 at St. Anne's Anglican
Church.