Parental love and support are unconditional, but some mixed feelings can arise if your child is struggling with addiction. Of course, your love for your child doesn’t dwindle. At the same time, you want to do what is best for them. How do you find the difference between love and support and enabling? Professional help and support may be the best way to go, but if your child doesn’t want the help, you need to support them in their own efforts.
Support Your Loved One
Although you may feel as though you’re at the end of your rope with your child’s addiction, they may feel like they’re not ready to get the support they need to quit. Sometimes, the more you try to change things, the more they stay the same. You have to find a way to support your child and know that their actions have consequences that are inevitable.
Wanting to protect and shield your child from harm is a parenting instinct but your instinct may be enabling your child’s behavior. Some addicts choose a life of chaos even if they have support available to them. If this is the case, you need to be creative about ways to keep them around and safe. For more information, talk to a professional about how you can support your child without enabling them to continue their addiction.
Join a Support Group For Yourself
Watching your child grow up with loving parental eyes from a toddler to a teenager creates an important bond. When your child is born there are support groups, blogs, and helpful websites like trulymama.com that help mothers navigate the first years.
There are meetings for loved ones of people with addictions that help family members through their tough times. You can share your story with others with similar stories and get helpful tips on how to navigate your child’s addiction. Addiction is hard on all parties, and counseling can help not only your affected child and you but also their coping siblings.
Early Interventions
Early interventions are helpful for both the addict and the parent. It is important to have an intervention at the early stages of addiction not just for your child but for the whole family. Addiction is a selfish illness that takes precious moments away from your lives like birthdays, weddings, and other milestone moments such as graduations.
If you’re unsure how to coordinate an intervention, there are professional addiction centers that offer intervention services. Having a professional interventionist coordinate your intervention can have benefits like mediation and psychological services that may put a better perspective on the illness of your child, and possibly cause them to want to commit to in-patient rehabilitation programs.
You worry about your child from inception to adulthood from joining parenting groups when your child is in infancy to support groups as they go through their addictions. There’s no stopping the love and worry you feel but there are things you can do to ensure that you’re helping your child without enabling their behavior. Keep a close-knit support system for you and them so that they know you’re always there to talk to them and they’re loved. Join a support group so that you have a place to speak about your trials and tribulations freely amongst people who are in a similar situation. Seeking the help of a professional can help you know what steps you can and should take as well as intervention techniques. Staging an intervention doesn’t always work but it can help your child see the damage that they’re causing to themselves and you. Be sure that your child knows that you love them no matter what they choose to do and do your best to support their healthy decisions.
