How to Handle an Addicted Teenager

Before a child is born, most parents are already carrying a heavy burden. They recognize that a great deal of responsibility comes with bringing a child into this world and typically believe that every choice they make from conception onward is going to play a role in how their child turns out.

For the most part, they may be right. Some choices made during pregnancy can definitely influence a child’s physiology and future health. Consuming alcohol, using drugs and some medications, eating nutritiously, among others, can all influence the health of an unborn child. However, as of the moment of conception, some unique personality characteristics and physiological potentials are already pretty much fixed, regardless of pre- and post-birth parenting choices that are made.

If you are the mother or father of an adult child who is not making the choices that are necessary for a sound future, this can be a heavier burden than any of the earlier ones you carried. When your child was young and misbehaved, you probably knew how to discipline them. Whether the effect was lasting or not, you probably felt that at least you were “doing something.”

As an adult, your child is no longer legally your responsibility, but you may actually feel an even heavier burden of social and emotional responsibility for him or her. Depending on how far from your personal measure of “good” your child falls, your personal level of anger and shame may vary. Some parents resort to hot anger and recrimination: “I didn’t raise you to be like this!” Others fall into the trap of accepting the blame that some misbehaving adult children want to place on them. Some parents may be bled dry by meeting the financial assistance pleas/demands from children who are habitually showing up in the judicial system and need money for court/legal fees. (And they may hope, often in vain, that the money goes to the stated purpose rather than buying their child more trouble). Some parents carry great shame about their children’s mistakes – believing that if they had just done a better job somewhere along the line, this problem/incidence/pattern/behavior would not have appeared in their child’s life.

The first truth is that we all make mistakes as parents. Yes, it is true: Good parents are not perfect parents. All of us could do a better job, in some way, than we do. But once a child is grown, you cannot have a re-do or an undo.

The second truth is that once a child is an adult, they have all the power they need in their lives to make smart decisions. As a corollary, adult children have no right, whatsoever, to blame their parents for decisions they are making today. A wonderful perk of adulthood is that adults get to take responsibility for themselves and make their own decisions. And most behaviors are choices: Addiction or detox? Fighting or loving? Honesty or deceit? Working or slacking? Building up or tearing down?