Substance abuse among our kids, when does it start? High school? That is pretty much what I thought, until I read an article that cited a study about drug use among youth in my area. That study found that 31% of seventh graders had begun to abuse alcohol by the sixth grade!
Time to get my head out of the sand and realize that being intentional about forming my sixth grader’s understanding about alcohol, prescription drugs and street drugs is upon me.
That same article indicated that a positive parent-child relationship plays a key role in drug proofing my kid. Recently my sixth grader talked me into playing a ‘first-person’ video game along with him. Seriously, I stink at video games. I am a digital alien who can count the number of hours spent with a joy stick with two hands and still have fingers left over. But my son looks forward to this “time” together, and I am finally seeing that for me it isn’t about the video game but about building relationship with him.