SITE AIDS PARENTS OF USERS

Has your adolescent ever been at a party broken up by the police? Has he
ever been suspended from school for skipping classes? Has she dropped
activities that used to be important to her? Does she have a poor attitude
about school and/or family life? Do his or her friends smoke marijuana or
drink? All of these may be signs of alcohol or drug use. Perhaps you are
uncertain, or perhaps you know your child is using. There is help for you
from other parents.

Edmond father Pat Nichols and a group called Edmond Parents Helping Parents
has put together a Web site at www.parentshelping parents.info.

This site has a wealth of information that will educate you and give you
practical help. I encourage you to check it out and tell other parents
about it. The information will be helpful to anyone who lives and/or works
with adolescents.

There is information on a toll-free parents hot line at (877) 446-6865,
available 24 hours a day. You do not have to give your name, and you will
talk to a live person.

Call 629-6384 to get a recorded message that will give you vital
information. And if you need immediate support, Nichols invites you to call
him at 642-8198.

One of the Web links is called "Helping Our Children," and the following
are some thoughts from that page. This is good, healthy advice for anyone
in a relationship, and particularly to a parent with an adolescent who is
using alcohol and/or drugs.

Self-pity blocks effective action. The more I indulge in it, the more I
feel that the answer to my problems is a change in others and in society,
not in myself. Thus I become a hopeless case.

Exhaustion is the result when I use my energy in mulling the past with
regret, or in trying to figure ways to escape a future that has yet to
arrive. Projecting an image of the future and anxiously hovering over it,
for fear that it will or won't come true, uses all of my energy and leaves
me unable to live today.

I will have no thought for the future actions of others, neither expecting
them to be better or worse as time goes on. I will love and let be.

All people are always changing. If I try to judge them, I do so only on
what I think I know of them, failing to realize there is much I do not know.

I, too, am always changing, and I can make that change a constructive one,
if I am willing. I can change myself. Others I can only love.

If you have concerns, the Parents Helping Parents Web site is a place to
begin that will give you direction and support. Your child's life might be
at stake. Check it out.