Copyright: 2004 The Edmonton Journal
Contact: letters@thejournal.canwest.com
Website: http://www.canada.com/edmonton/edmontonjournal/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/134
Author: Katherine Dedyna, Victoria Times Colonist, CanWest News Service
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?135 (Drug Education)

DON'T PANIC: MOST TEENS TURN OUT FINE

Fear of drug, alcohol problems make parents clamp down just at wrong time

VICTORIA -- 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 are 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 the
University of Victoria recently 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, adding most
adolescents who get involved with experimentation -- not excessive use --
will do fine.

That said, he's afraid of the possibility 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 sometimes ignore 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. It's the only such centre in Canada
besides the University of Toronto.

Schulenberg says, "Usually we can tell who's going to use drugs and drink
and who isn't."

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, 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."