The Minnesota Prevention Resource Center is your “grand central station” for information on Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug prevention throughout Minnesota, as well as your clearinghouse for free and low-cost materials. Part of our mission is to support the parents and professionals who are working hard to keep our kids from abusing substances. Many of our resources are free and can be accessed from our website (www.emprc.org). Here you can sign up for MnPrev, our free weekly newsletter. You can also view videos from the Partnership for Drug Free America, receive free technical assistance through our “Ask the Specialist” feature, and download our materials catalog. In this blog post we wanted to focus on the role parents/guardians play in the development of drug-free kids.
In 2009, Joseph A. Califano, Jr., Founder and Chair of The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, published a new book titled, How to Raise a Drug-Free Kid The Straight Dope for Parents. In the book Mr. Califano highlights parental engagement as a key to keeping kids off drugs. He offers these nine keys to staying engaged:
1. Be There: Get Involved in Your Children’s Lives and Activities: “Being there—being physically and emotionally available and present—is the essence of parental engagement.” Children who grow up in supportive families are less likely to smoke, drink, or take drugs.
2. Open the Lines of Communication and Keep Them Wide Open: More than 1/3 of teens report never having a serious conversation with their parents about the dangers of drug use. Yet children who learn about the risks of drug use from their parents are much less likely to use them.
3. Set a Good Example: Actions Are More Persuasive than Words: “The most important facet of parental engagement is your own conduct.” Parents who smoke, drink, or use drugs are likelier to have kids who smoke, drink, or use drugs as well.
4. Set Rules and Expect Your Children to Follow Them: “Engagement in your children’s lives involves establishing expectations and limits.” Being able to effectively enforce and explain rules often demonstrates to children that you really care about them.
5. Monitor your Children’s Whereabouts: “Half of teens who come home after 10:00 P.M. on a school night report that drug and alcohol use was going on among their friends.” It’s important to know whom your kids are with, where they are, and what they are doing.
6. Maintain Family Rituals, Such as Eating Dinner Together: More than a decade of research has found that the more a child has dinner with their parents, the less likely they are to smoke, drink, or use drugs.
7. Incorporate Religious and Spiritual Practices into Family Life: “Teens who attend religious services regularly—at least once a week—are at a much lower risk of smoking, drinking, or using drugs than teens who never attend religious services.”
8. Get Dad Engaged—and Keep Him Engaged: “Fathers who are involved in their children’s daily lives and keep open lines of communication with their children sharply reduce their children’s risk of substance abuse.”
9. Engage with the Larger Community: There are other parents that express the same concerns as you. It’s important to get involved with other parents, teachers, and neighbors to establish lines of support and communication.
To learn more about parental engagement and the book How to Raise a Drug-Free Kid The Straight Dope for Parents please visit www.straightdopeforparents.org
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