Last night Curtis and I went to a meeting at a local high school discussing progress with dealing with underage drinking in Northeast Seattle. Ostensibly, a reason to celebrate the results of a health survey which showed that the number of tenth graders who self-reported that they had used alcohol or drugs in the last 30 days had dropped from 39% in 2006 to 20% in 2010.
Panel of some members of this coalition spoke about what techniques they used that they thought made a difference. Including two students (standing in my picture), school administrators, a policeman, a parent and some others.
As often is the case, the students had the most interesting things to say. That scaring does not work, that trying to monitor your kids by texting constantly is annoying and disrespectful. Interesting that both of these students said that their motivation to participate was that a family member's life had been compromised by substance abuse.
The parent talked about some of the tips that she had learned:
keep communication open
talk to your kids about drugs and alcohol
know your kids friends
know your kids friends' parents
know where your kid is
and
make sure there are clear consequences for whatever (several panel members said this)
Interesting that Changes teaches against most of these things to some extent.
What came to my mind which seemed to be really appropriate...
What do you do when these things don't work???
That's what we do at Changes.
I was also disturbed by the use of the phrase 'good kids'. As in "I know my daughter's friends are good kids." I realized how much I resented it that parents would consider the Changes kids not 'good kids' but 'bad kids'. There's some latent racism here also. I would not categorize any of these struggling young people as 'bad kids' (though there are some that come awful close).
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