Family Factors You Should Know to Avoid Adding to the Drug Abuse Epidemic
Can you think of a moment in time where you realized how much your family has meant to you? Our family experiences and dynamics help shape us into the person we will become. We gain a lot of habits based on what we observe in our family, of how we are treated by family members. Sadly, drug use and abuse can be apart of the habits that we pick up from our families. Luckily, there are factors in family life that have been studied to potentially avoid the use of drugs in their family. Applying family factors like family management, family communication, and parental role modeling need to be considered in households.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, about 4% of adolescents, 14.8% of young adults, and 6.4% of adults over the age of 26 suffer from drug abuse. This is a large enough percentage of the population in the United States to be taken seriously. This statistic is continuing to rise overtime, so it is safe to say that it is not going to slow down anytime soon.
The family has been labeled as the most influential childhood factor that shapes the child and later life adaptations. Quality and consistency of a few family factors can truly work in helping a child get through life without having a strong likelihood of abusing drugs. The first factor is family management. According to Catherine Spoomer, a lack of discipline in the home and negative communication patterns are considered family management. If these aspects are found in families, children will adapt from an early age to not respect authority and rules. This delinquent behavior tends to start as young as the age of five and continues with a lack of authority in the home. According to Juvenile Justice, 60,000 interviews were done with young offenders and half of them admitted to using alcohol regularly by the age of 16. Individuals who abuse drugs typically do not conform to the norms of society, which correlate with those who do not respect authority and rules from a young age.
Have you ever felt that you were not able to openly communicate with your family members? It is extremely important to feel comfort enough to openly talk to your family members. Family communication is another factor that is super important from a young age. Children can find themselves lost and misguided in their own homes if they are never exposed to openly communicating and sharing affection with their family. When children feel lost and misguided in their home, they are likely to feel the same way outside of the home. It can be hard to understand how to openly communicate and share emotions outside of the family, so many individuals turn to drugs to numb their emotions. This could be avoided if children are taught that communicating about personal emotions and struggles should be valued and not seen as a weakness.
When parents abuse drugs, it affects everyone in the home. Parent role-modeling is another family factor that Catherine Spoomer would consider extremely important. Parents who use drugs or have a positive attitude drugs normalize the use of drugs in their children’s life. Approximately 12% of children in the United States lived with at least one parent who abused drugs in the home. According to CRC Health, children who have parents who abuse drugs are twice as likely to abuse drugs themselves.
Drug abuse and misuse may not be apparent in every family. That is great! However, that does not mean that this information about family factors is not important. Drugs can take a powerful hold over anyone. Incorporating these different family factors can help lead to children recognizing that they feel they are in a safe home that they can communicate in. Not letting children be exposed to bad habits from the people they love like drug abuse, is also a key aspect. These family factors can help guide your child in the right direction to make the right choices when they are off on their own!
