Copyright: 2004 Times Colonist
Contact: letters@tc.canwest.com
Website: http://www.canada.com/victoria/timescolonist/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481
Author: Katherine Dedyna, Times Colonist
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?135 (Drug Education)

THE KIDS WILL BE ALL RIGHT

Parents Shouldn't Fret Too Much About Drug Experimentation, Expert Says

Good parents often worry needlessly that their practically perfect little
kids will turn into drug-addled, binge-drinking, chain-smoking teenagers.
God knows they've heard the stories of how it happened to the really nice
family around the corner and now the kid's a mess and the parents even worse.

Relax, all you good parents. An international expert on youth addictions
says those horror stories do happen, even to good parents, but they're not
common.

"It's unlikely the kids will be acting out if parents were doing all the
right things -- but a lot of parents are frightened," says Dr. John
Schulenberg, a professor of developmental psychology at the University of
Michigan. The father of two young children gave a Landsdowne lecture at
UVic last week entitled After All Those Years of Studying Adolescents and
Substance Abuse, What Will I Do When My Children Become Teenagers? Fear of
adolescent meltdown makes parents clamp down on their kids and get
judgmental just when they need to encourage self-reliance and keep the
doors of communication open wide.

Research shows that teens who experiment with drugs and alcohol generally
turn out to be normally functioning adults, as today's parents, whose drug
use hit a peak in the late '70s and early '80s, know.

"It's the rule as opposed to the exception," he says. "Most adolescents who
get involved with experimentation -- not excessive use -- and the large
majority will do fine." That said, he's scared of his own young children,
now seven and two, getting into substance abuse and parents are right to be
worried when it happens. Drinking and driving can kill; some drugs change
the brain; there are no long-term studies of the effects of crystal meth
and some early habits stay with people all their lives.

Parents ignore too many markers evident in youth that can be predictive of
substance abuse, notes UVic psychologist Bonnie Leadbeater, among them the
adolescent who's always wearing a cast or is really aggressive in sports --
signs of excessive risk taking.

"Maybe their risk-taking could take a safer direction, such as riding
horses or learning to ski," says Leadbeater, the director of the new UVic
Centre for Addictions Research of B.C., which recently received $10 million
from the B.C. Addictions Foundation. (It's the only such centre in Canada
besides the University of Toronto.)

Schulenberg goes on to say "Usually we can tell who's going to use drugs
and drink and who isn't," he adds. Typically, it's youth who are disengaged
from school, into high-risk behaviour and sensation seeking and either
highly gregarious or highly alienated. Loneliness is a protective factor --
those teens don't often use drugs or alcohol, which are peer-related
activities.

Leadbeater warns parents to avoid negative projections about what the
teenage years will be like.

Parents who have reasonable relationships with their kids at age eight will
have that at 15. Yet the sense that these good relationships will crash in
adolescence are "universal," she says. The expectation is that adolescence
will be very difficult, leading parents to increase the control, when they
should probably increase the respect for the adolescent's ability to
discuss and make healthy decisions.

"I think that demonizing adolescents is really the wrong way to go,"
Schulenberg stresses. Not only is it unnecessary, it scares both parents
and kids.

"It's so important to take the long view. Parenting is never easy," he
adds. "Sometime during the middle of adolescence, young people turn away
from their parents which is very sad for a lot of families but the good
news is they come back.

Schulenberg, who has a PhD in human development and family studies and 25
years in the field has learned "way more" about child psychology by being a
parent. It even made him question whether research really matters "Is it
any better or worse than common sense?"

Even though he's an expert by anyone's measure, "one ought to be skeptical
of experts. Parents know their children better than anyone else."