Children and drugs
Over the past 10 years, the number of deaths from drug use has increased 12 times, and among children 42 times.
The most terrible sin of childhood is smoking. We must note that smoking begins in the sixth grade, and the bulk of smokers are children from disadvantaged families.
Every day, passing by schools in the yard, you can see first-graders actively smoking cigarettes around the corner of the gym. Therefore, now we need to worry about our children. And not only because children smoke tobacco, but because in schools they smoke marijuana, sniff "Moment". Ecstasy and heroin - in elite areas, where girls and boys receive at least $ 100 a month for pocket expenses. This figure was not taken "from the ceiling". A friend's boy studies at a school where the presence or absence of the specified amount automatically determines your place in the school hierarchy. By the way, it was in this class that a student hanged himself while under the influence of drugs.
We all work and very often we see our children only when they are sleeping and for half an hour in the morning, before going to school. It is very difficult to catch the moment when something "wrong" begins. Therefore, every parent should know, like a multiplication table, the main symptoms by which you can determine that a child is addicted to drugs.
Physiological signs:
- pale skin;
- dilated or narrowed pupils, reddened or cloudy eyes;
- slowed, incoherent speech;
- loss of appetite, weight loss or excessive eating;
- chronic cough;
- poor coordination of movements (shaking or stumbling).
From talking to parents of drug-addicted children, we learned that we also need to pay attention to unusual appetite and thirst (this is characteristic of the "retirement" period).
Behavioral signs:
- causeless agitation, lethargy;
- increased working capacity;
- increasing indifference to everything, deterioration of memory and attention;
- leaving the house, skipping school for incomprehensible reasons;
- difficulty concentrating on something specific;
- insomnia;
- painful reaction to criticism, frequent and sharp mood swings;
- increased fatigue;
- unwillingness to communicate with people with whom he was previously close;
- decreased performance at school;
- constant requests for money;
- disappearance of valuables, books, clothes, video and audio equipment from the house;
- frequent phone calls;
- self-isolation, withdrawal from activities that were previously interesting;
- frequent lying, cunning, deceitfulness;
- withdrawal from answering direct questions, tendency to make up stories;
- untidiness in appearance;
- tendency to listen to specific music;
- spending most of the time in asocial companies
Obvious signs:
- traces of injections, cuts, bruises;
- pieces of paper and banknotes rolled into tubes;
- small, sooty spoons;
- capsules, blisters, tin cans;
- packs of sleeping pills or sedatives;
- "Belomor" cigarettes in cigarette packs.
If you have found at least a few of these signs, then it's time to go for a urine test. This is no joke - it is in the urine that even the faintest traces of drugs can be detected. Unfortunately, even if you know all the signs by heart, you will only notice them when the child is already seriously involved in drug use. Therefore, the main attention should be paid to prevention.
I will notice that children perfectly understand that they are doing something wrong. Therefore, we advise parents not to be fooled by the naivety and innocence of children. The most stupid parental position: this cannot happen to my (mine), because... He (she) is serious, does not swear at all...
Let's explain right away - Matom does not curse because he is not an idiot and perfectly understands that it is indecent, but this does not mean at all that he does not know mother's words. And they talk about sex and drugs. And your task, as a parent, is to learn how to talk to your child about these ticklish topics so that these topics seem normal to him, so that he is not ashamed to talk to you about it.
It is necessary to clearly realize that you will not be able to oppose the laws that prevail in the teenage environment. All you have to do is to prepare the child for what he can be offered, but the results will be terrible. It is not bad to cite examples from the lives of popular personalities. Kurt Cobain from "Nirvana" is quite suitable as a negative example. But the wife of the same Cobain - Courtney Love has recovered and lives comfortably on the money earned by the late Kurt.
It is much easier for those whose child is a natural leader. As a rule, such children have a good thinking head and they simply will not go to anyone's pretext. And if the child can be controlled? Then the task becomes more difficult.
It is necessary to organize the child's leisure so that he has practically no "free" time. In the old, proven time, sections and circles are not the worst option.
An important rule that many ignore is to know all the child's friends. The best option is to meet the parents of friends. In this case, you will fully imagine the circle of communication. It is possible that it will be easier for you to resist evil together.
Do you know why teenagers try drugs? Out of curiosity, for the company. For them, it's like looking into Bluebeard's locked room. Only, even in a fairy tale, the end is terrible - only one managed to avoid death, the others died. How to deal with curiosity? Probably not. Your clever words may fall on deaf ears. But children perceive the visual range very vividly. Maybe, instead of another museum, take them to a clinic for drug addicts? Where will they see with their own eyes what people who "sat down" on drugs turn into? It is said that "familiarization tours" to the prison stop many. So are the realities of the clinic - beggars, without enough medicine, with pain, stench and suffering, it is quite possible that someone will be stopped.
Much has been said and discussed about the fact that those who are not truly loved become drug addicts. We do not mean dysfunctional families, where children are left to themselves, and were born only because the eternally drunk mother delayed the abortion. It would seem that such problems should not exist in prosperous families, but in practice everything is different. And then the parents sit at an appointment with a narcologist and talk about trips, clothes and colossal amounts of pocket money. And the child just needs to be talked to in the evening about what interests him.