Rarely ever do I talk to teens who struggle with drugs or alcohol who say I had a perfect upbringing with perfect parents and none of my childhood had anything to do with my drug or alcohol use. That's not to say that for some that may absolutely be the case. But for most teens who struggle with drug or alcohol use also struggled at some point with their family. Now, you're here taking this course. So you're 90% ahead of the game, and you're here because you care because you want what's best for your kid or kids. So I want you to take some time to think about your child's upbringing.
Up to this point. Notice the struggles they may have had with you or with other family members. One thing you should never do is brush those struggles off, no matter how little or insignificant. They may seem to you. Even kids who don't use drugs or alcohol have family struggles. So I don't want You feel or think like your kid is doomed just because they've had a hard time with you or someone else.
But what I do want you to do is just think about your kids relationship and with you and and their other parent or grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, what's been their biggest struggle and start from there. For example, my friend, a single mom has had a really rocky relationship with her son mostly because of his outbursts and her reaction to those outbursts. But those arguments and fights were just between her and her son, and other family members who are not affected. When our son started drinking alcohol at around age 15. I suggested that she go to counseling to work on her relationship with her son first, and then see how she can help her son dealing with his dad not being around. Once they started working on those two things.
Things got better issues were addressed and he graduated last year from UCLA and is working full time as a software engineer. Okay, so that's the short story and just an example of how working on family issues may have a huge impact what she admitted later on, and what surprised her the most was how affected her son was by his dad leaving the country. He didn't seem upset matter affected at all, but subconsciously was taking his anger out on her. Once they got that all sorted out, everything started to get better. So whatever may be going on, it's important to address these issues at a bare minimum by opening up and taking time to talk through them. If you think counseling is necessary, then I would highly recommend that as well.
There could be internal feelings that just aren't ready to come out and a professional can help with that. All right, so let's move on and talk about friends.