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Apr. 10th, 2006
the march of the norms
Apr. 10th, 2006 08:59 pmI just got an email from SNO's school. It is a notice that they will be hosting a forum/seminar/information session/backpatting mutual praise night about "Parent Corps" which apparently has something to do with keeping your kids off drugs and alcohol. I can tell just from reading it that it's one of those things I despise. Even if I agreed with the drugs laws (which I do not at all) I do agree about the "evils" of alcohol (sorry mfree, I couldn't resist teasing you :P) and therefore agree with some kind of dialogue and attention being put towards warning your kids against drinking and smoking cigarettes. Wow, that sentence sucked. Well, I figure you get my drift.
I wish I could go to this farce and get a chance to speak up.
Hey parents! You want to do something about keeping your kids off drugs and alcohol? (I"m not even going to bother suggesting they chill the fuck out about drugs and start TEACHING their kids how to experiment SENSIBLY because I think they'd tar and feather me) Then listen up:
YOU CAN'T STOP THEM. That is right. Your children, that you so carefully nurtured and fostered through many stages of development will not stay away from drugs and alcohol because of anything YOU say. What matters and what might have some influence upon their decisions is what you DO.
Want your kids to stay clean completely? Then YOU stay clean. Don't take any prescriptions for nebulous ailments, don't take pain relievers and don't for gahds sake drink anything stronger than water. Even caffeine. Kids know what all those inebriants are for - personality and mood alteratives - and they are VERY aware of why you do them. Don't ever say "I HAVE to have my pills/coffee/beer or else..." because each time you do, you send the clear message "alter your chemistry for relief of problems" and you are just begging to have them experiment. Now, the problem with this approach is going too far. If you restrict your child and yourself too much, life is no fun. Plus there's the fact that even if your child absorbs the message "altering your chemistry is bad" from you, s/he'll see it played out from the opposing side far too much.
Want your kids to stay out of trouble with drugs and alcohol? Then you TEACH them the fine lines that exist between curative, relieving and purely alterative chemistry. Quit acting like your life will not be worth living if you don't pop a pill. Make it clear that you can manage to deal with problems without chemistry but because of the miracle of modern sciences you can merely choose to make your life easier by properly administering what is missing in your bodily makeup. There is a very big difference between denying the reality of chemical alteratives and understanding how to USE chemical alteratives and you need ot be clear about it.
Dig it, kids aren't interested in hearing you preach about something you obviously aren't following yourself. They don't see much difference so TEACH them the difference. Think that doing so somehow encourages the use of drugs and alcohol? Get real. Since when has reverse psychology worked on your kids? Probably not since they were about 10. Stop throwing up your arms and screaming about how evil drugs are - I guarantee you by age 13 every kids knows somebody who uses or maybe even abuses drugs and appears to have no serious side-effect from doing so. Thinking far into the future isn't what kids are good at and therein lies the problem. Make them understand the long-term effects of what they do to their bodies and I promise you you will make more of an impression than any scare tactic or empty lecture could have.
Kids learn chemistry in school. They learn about the wonders of the body in Health class. They learn about medicine as well. They can put two and two together and make the quantum leap of logic that "drugs" includes your psych medicine, your aspirin, your coffee, your beer, your soda even. You'd better start addressing the screaming hypocrisy of telling them to run far away from "drugs" while you pop your four pills and wash them down with coffee.
I wish I could go to this farce and get a chance to speak up.
Hey parents! You want to do something about keeping your kids off drugs and alcohol? (I"m not even going to bother suggesting they chill the fuck out about drugs and start TEACHING their kids how to experiment SENSIBLY because I think they'd tar and feather me) Then listen up:
YOU CAN'T STOP THEM. That is right. Your children, that you so carefully nurtured and fostered through many stages of development will not stay away from drugs and alcohol because of anything YOU say. What matters and what might have some influence upon their decisions is what you DO.
Want your kids to stay clean completely? Then YOU stay clean. Don't take any prescriptions for nebulous ailments, don't take pain relievers and don't for gahds sake drink anything stronger than water. Even caffeine. Kids know what all those inebriants are for - personality and mood alteratives - and they are VERY aware of why you do them. Don't ever say "I HAVE to have my pills/coffee/beer or else..." because each time you do, you send the clear message "alter your chemistry for relief of problems" and you are just begging to have them experiment. Now, the problem with this approach is going too far. If you restrict your child and yourself too much, life is no fun. Plus there's the fact that even if your child absorbs the message "altering your chemistry is bad" from you, s/he'll see it played out from the opposing side far too much.
Want your kids to stay out of trouble with drugs and alcohol? Then you TEACH them the fine lines that exist between curative, relieving and purely alterative chemistry. Quit acting like your life will not be worth living if you don't pop a pill. Make it clear that you can manage to deal with problems without chemistry but because of the miracle of modern sciences you can merely choose to make your life easier by properly administering what is missing in your bodily makeup. There is a very big difference between denying the reality of chemical alteratives and understanding how to USE chemical alteratives and you need ot be clear about it.
Dig it, kids aren't interested in hearing you preach about something you obviously aren't following yourself. They don't see much difference so TEACH them the difference. Think that doing so somehow encourages the use of drugs and alcohol? Get real. Since when has reverse psychology worked on your kids? Probably not since they were about 10. Stop throwing up your arms and screaming about how evil drugs are - I guarantee you by age 13 every kids knows somebody who uses or maybe even abuses drugs and appears to have no serious side-effect from doing so. Thinking far into the future isn't what kids are good at and therein lies the problem. Make them understand the long-term effects of what they do to their bodies and I promise you you will make more of an impression than any scare tactic or empty lecture could have.
Kids learn chemistry in school. They learn about the wonders of the body in Health class. They learn about medicine as well. They can put two and two together and make the quantum leap of logic that "drugs" includes your psych medicine, your aspirin, your coffee, your beer, your soda even. You'd better start addressing the screaming hypocrisy of telling them to run far away from "drugs" while you pop your four pills and wash them down with coffee.