Is Enabling Your Son Slowly Killing Him?

Parents have the responsibility of teaching their children about drugs and the detrimental effects to the body. Although you could be confident that your kids and teenagers are refraining from drug use, it’s possible that they’re hiding this habit from you. If you find out about your son’s drug habit, it’s critical to deal with the situation. Enabling your son could cause permanent harm or even death in some cases.

Their Actions Have Consequences

When you enable your son, you’re showing him that there are no real effects to his behavior. Essentially, he can be an addict for as long as he desires, and he could overdose in that time period. It’s important for him to feel the effects of his actions. If he misses class for a week because he’s taking drugs with friends, he’ll pay for those actions with failing grades, summer school and missed opportunities. It’s these consequences that might help your son see the err of his ways, so that he can seek professional help.

Negative Aspects of Covering Up the Issue

As you cover for your son, he’ll continue to use drugs and possibly graduate to harder substances. A prescription pill addiction could slowly evolve into a heroin problem, for example. Your son will have a harder time with recovery if he is addicted to more than just one substance. He could easily overdose as he tries harder drugs when you enable his behaviors each day.

The Blame Game

You may realize that enabling your son doesn’t help him at all, but he continues to use drugs even with consequences falling on his shoulders. It’s easy to blame yourself for his behavior, but it’s critical to understand that addiction is a disease. Some people are more prone to addictive behavior than others. You might have discussed drug prevention at great lengths with your son, and he still experimented with various substances. Stopping the enabling process and allowing your son to fall is often the only way he’ll learn that drugs aren’t the answer in his life.

Providing Loving Support

Parents must keep their loving support available for their son at every point along the addiction journey. Carefully point out the consequences of particular actions, but always let your son know that he’s loved. That caring factor might be the key to his final decision to get clean at a local rehab center.

As a parent, you cannot force your child to enter rehab. Regardless of age, your son must make the personal commitment to quit using drugs. When your son wants to improve his life, you’re welcome to help him on his journey. Researching treatment centers, driving him to rehab appointments and other tasks will make his recovery much easier in the end.