Teaching Kids to Think (24 page)
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Authors: Darlene Sweetland
Why This Generation Is So Susceptible to Substance Use and Abuse
Drugs and alcohol may not be a defining characteristic of the Instant Gratification Generation, but illicit substances certainly play a role in their lives. This is, after all, a group of young people that has difficulty with delayed gratification, which means these teens can't tolerate waiting for things. They often look for the fastest solution to problems, not the best, and many teens truly believe that nothing bad will happen to them if they use substances, despite mounds of evidence to the contrary. Their desire for the quick answer leads them to act without thinking things through, or to disregard their own conscience if they do think about what they are about to do.
The Failure to Think Things Through
We have raised a generation of children who need and come to expect quick solutions to problems, as we demonstrate throughout this book. This means that they aren't required to think things through, which encourages them to act impulsively.
Because children and teens are so accustomed to getting things quickly, kids in this generation are less likely to take the time to consider all the outcomes of their decisions. This generation is the most educated about the dangers of drug use and the drugs today are more dangerous than ever, but none of that has kept them from using.
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Their desire to get what they want outweighs the requirement for them to wait and be thoughtful before they act. They pay attention to what is in front of them in the moment. If it is what they want, they act on it. Teens are generally impulsive anyway, but add the reinforcement of instant gratification in this generation and they are even more vulnerable to follow the impulse to use drugs to fit in, relieve boredom, rebel, and so on.
A seventeen-year-old boy was in my office upset at his parents because he was grounded for getting caught drinking over the weekend. He proceeded to tell me that he should not get in so much trouble for having only one beer. This was all his parents knew of the night, so, of course, that is what their arguments were about. He then told me he drank five beers that night and then rode in the car with the friend who was the “most sober” to another party. He boasted that his friends are careful to choose one person who only drinks a little so they have a ride. He did not even consider the consequences of what could have happened. He was very shortsighted in several ways. First, he was truly upset with his parents for the consequence they gave him for drinking “only one beer,” even though he did much more that night. Second, he was so focused on having fun that he did not even consider the potentially deadly outcome of drinking and driving.
âDr. Darlene
Would it surprise you to know that the boy in the vignette is an A student who spends a lot of time doing community service? He is a bright kid who generally thinks of others. So, why did he act so irresponsibly? In many ways, society has reinforced the idea of thinking quickly. Starting in school, the first child to raise her hand gets to answer the teacher's question, the first kid to the foursquare court gets to make the rules even if they are silly rules and poorly thought out. Parents need to be aware of this phenomenon and let their children know that in some situations taking their time and thinking about options is a good idea. Alternately, when they see the signs and symptoms of reckless drug or alcohol use, they need to react quickly and set limits. We discuss how parents can identify signs and set limits throughout this chapter.
In our work with children and teens, we often use the idea of the STOPP sign. This is an easy way to help children organize their thoughts before they make an important decision. STOPP stands for
S
top,
T
hink,
O
bserve,
P
lan,
P
roceed. The idea is to consider the risks and the benefits of a decision before making it. Simply getting them to stop and think is a great first step. Another great thing about the STOPP sign is that it is easy for parents to use and reinforce at home.
Parents Need to Be Very Aware
One thing we have learned, in all our years working with teenagers, is that parents are not always good judges of which friends are the responsible ones. Time and time again parents will tell us which of their child's friends they trust and then their teen will come in and laugh, because she says the friend her parents thinks is responsible in fact drinks or smokes more than anyone else. It is important to remember that the friendliest and most socially competent child isn't always the one following the rules. We wish we could tell you how to know who is trustworthy and who is not, but there are no tried-and-true ways. The best thing is to be around your child and her friends in social situations as much as possible, observing how they interact with each other. Providing rides or opening your house for them to hang out is a great way to do that.
Parents should also be aware of the “street names” that kids use when talking about drugs. Most of us are familiar with the mainstream drug references, like “pot” for marijuana, but there are a lot of new drugs, many of them synthetic, that kids can actually find in liquor stores and head shops. Children often discuss substances like K2, Spice, salvia, bath salts, molly, and a host of others right in front of adults, because the adults simply don't know what they are talking about. An easy way for parents to keep up is to visit websites, such as
www.drugfree.org
, where they can learn just about anything about drugs.
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You should continually stay informed about who your child's friends are and what is going on in the community. Make an effort to check in with your children and keep an open mind regarding what you hear. Don't take what they say for granted. It is a powerful message to them when they know you are interested in what is going on in their lives, whether or not they ultimately share anything with you.
Things Need to Be Fun All the Time
I hear far too frequently about how kids make the trip to the local grocery store or pharmacy when they are bored to grab a packet of cold medicine. They don't pay for it; they simply open it in the store, split up the pills, and hope they get a buzz. Cold medicine tends to dehydrate you and the kids say that if you take enough you get a hallucinogenic feeling for a short time. Of the kids who have told me this story, several of them have ended up in the emergency room because they were bored and wanted some excitement but overdosed by accident instead.
âDr. Ron
Children and teens in this generation are bombarded with stimulating information from early on. They become accustomed to needing that constant excitement. As illustrated in the foregoing example, very often we hear stories of the children and teens we work with getting in trouble with drugs and alcohol because they were bored and the substances were available.
Because children and teens tend to act impulsively on opportunity, they may seek out items from around the house, like bottles from unlocked alcohol cabinets, prescription drugs from their parent's medicine cabinet, and over-the-counter medicines that can get them high if taken the “wrong” way. We recommend that every parent be aware of what alcohol and prescription drugs are in the house and periodically take an informal inventory. If the medicine cabinet contains a pill bottle with five Vicodin left over from a minor surgery, check every now and again to make sure the pills are all there. Another option is to remove prescription drugs from the medicine cabinet altogether and store them where your teen (or their friends) can't access them.
Self-Medicating
A family brought their fifteen-year-old son to see me because they were concerned he had a drinking problem. They discovered that he had been drinking alcohol at home and at school several times per week. They were looking for a referral for a teen alcohol program and guidance about what they should do as a family. It didn't take long for me to conclude that the underlying issue was peer related and that he drank as a way of escaping the negative thoughts he had about himself and his deteriorating relationship with his friends. He chose alcohol as self-medication, his preferred way to handle his emotions, because he had never had to solve a problem like this before on his own. Once he stopped self-medicating, and with some help, he was able to come up with some effective ways to manage his stress and friendships in a healthier way. He now has a plan for what to do when he has negative thoughts about his friends that may or may not be justified.
âDr. Ron
It is not uncommon for people to use an illicit substance to help them cope with stress. People who are feeling withdrawn might look for something to give them a little boost of energy, and those with social phobias have been known to drink alcohol or take other depressants as a way of dealing with their nerves around others. We probably all know someone who takes a pill before she flies on a plane or speaks in front of a crowd to help with anxiety.
The Instant Gratification Generation takes it one step further. Many children and adolescents have developed an amazingly low threshold for dealing with any kind of anxiety, low self-esteem, or frustration. This puts them at high risk to turn to substances to help them “forget” their problems, because they do not want to or know how to deal with them. First, the pressure for this generation to perform at high levels is significant. Second, as we have highlighted in previous chapters, they don't have the practice to know how to deal with problems and feel confident they can solve them. So when they are presented an opportunity to forget about those problems for a while and their attitude is “I don't care,” it is very easy to turn to substances as an escape.
The concept of self-medicating is also appealing to the Instant Gratification Generation because it is easy. They have a problem, they don't have confidence they can deal with it, and there is a quick way to avoid the problem and feel better. Yet kids only think about what the drug can do
for
them, not what it is doing
to
them. What might feel great one night may actually impact the rest of their lives, and in a way that is slow enough that they fail to see the link. If you feel fine the next day, drugs or alcohol must be OK to use again and again. The false sense of security gained by being narrow-minded and impulsive gives these kids the belief that they will be fine no matter what they do. Nothing can be further from the truth; they just haven't learned it yet.
It Won't Happen To Me
In a 2012 study, nearly 25 percent of teens surveyed reported that, within the previous month, they had ridden in a car with someone who had been drinking alcohol, and almost 10 percent admitted to driving after drinking in the same month.
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One third of the young drivers killed in car crashes had alcohol in their system, but teens insist that they will never be a statistic.
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Nearly 150,000 teens experience an accidental drug overdose each year, and it is likely that few of them thought it would happen to them.
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We have demonstrated how youth today are highly impulsive and look for easy solutions to their problems. There is another quality they possess that plays a major role in their decisions about using illegal substances: denial. A person in denial is someone who refuses to pay attention to the facts. Schools are saturated with negative messages about the horrors of teen drug use. High schools display demolished cars involved in drunk driving accidents, and children as early as kindergarten take antidrug pledges. Parents, teachers, religious leaders, and law enforcement officials talk about the dangerous consequences of drug or alcohol abuse all the time, and yet, teenagers honestly believe that none of what they learn will happen to them.
Rationalization
During a session with a high school junior enrolled at a competitive private school, I learned that he had been buying Adderall during finals week. Adderall is a medication prescribed by psychiatrists to help treat ADHD/ADD because it helps improve concentration. It is a substance commonly sold illegally on college campuses during finals to help students study for exams. And in the past several years, we have heard this same thing from high school kids too. This particular student needed certain grades to qualify for his top college choices and was willing to do anything to get the best grades. Buying illegal prescription drugs and taking them without a doctor's guidance is a huge risk to take to reduce his anxiety about doing well on exams.
âDr. Ron
“It's organic.” “It's all natural.” “What's the difference if I buy it at school or get it prescribed from a doctor? It's the same drug.” These are just a few of the things we hear from children and teens who use illegal substances. Kids today offer a lot of excuses as to why it is OK for them to ingest whatever they want, and they put a lot of effort into finding reasons that their behavior should be acceptable to parents and concerned adults. In fact, they can spend a lot of time on the Internet searching for evidence to support their beliefs.
Kids want what they want, and they will find all sorts of reasons to confirm their beliefs. One form of rationalization is called “confirmatory bias.” This means the person is only looking for evidence that supports his or her theory. Therefore, when kids are looking for reasons their impulsive and dangerous behavior should be acceptable, they focus on information that supports their belief and ignore all the evidence that says otherwise. It is true that the Internet is full of articles that support drug use, but a lot of research also highlights the dangers. They just don't pay attention to those contrary articles. In many ways, they have been trained to rely on the first piece of information that supports their ideas. Internet search engines are organized to put the best match at the top of the list, and we know that is the way they search for information. What do you expect to find at the top of the list when you search for “marijuana is not dangerous”?