parents: your kids are learning from you
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Join Date: Dec 2004
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parents: your kids are learning from you
Parents, your kids are learning from you. Point blank. There is nothing you can say that will talk louder than your actions.
When you continually allow alcohol to be used around them, you're sending a message. When you stay in an alcoholic situation, you are conditioning them to that. There are no ifs ands or buts about it. Although I don't use, I was conditioned to it, too, from my husband, his friends and family, from so many people we know. Amazingly (to me), there actually are people out there whose social lives don't revolve around drinking. FIND THEM and create a healthy life for yourself and your children. If need be, walk away and create that world for yourself. Before you know it, the kids grow up and chances are they'll emulate what they've seen. They can say the right things the whole time they're growing up and you can too (about not using and learning from those with problems), but it's still **so easy** to fall into what you've been conditioned to see as "normal" in your life.
Create your boundaries, as needed. Figure out what they are and how you're planning on enforcing them. Where and when you'll take the kids away from drinking environments and what you'll do as a substitute?
"If I'd known then, what I know now...." I would have done so much differently. I've never wanted a divorce or to have the kids grow up without their dad (in other ways, he's been a wonderful dad), but I never, never, never wanted them to have to deal first-hand with alcohol problems. Leaving, whether for the day whenever he was drinking, or something more permanent, would have been the better choice for them in the long run. Hindsight is 20-20. Maybe some of it wouldn't have changed, as I couldn't have kept them away from the family reunions each year that revolve around drinking, but knowing this now, I wish I would have been educated earlier and tried harder is so many ways, or even asked here for advice on those things.
Congratulations to all of you who've put your children's long-term health above the difficulties of dealing with your A.
When you continually allow alcohol to be used around them, you're sending a message. When you stay in an alcoholic situation, you are conditioning them to that. There are no ifs ands or buts about it. Although I don't use, I was conditioned to it, too, from my husband, his friends and family, from so many people we know. Amazingly (to me), there actually are people out there whose social lives don't revolve around drinking. FIND THEM and create a healthy life for yourself and your children. If need be, walk away and create that world for yourself. Before you know it, the kids grow up and chances are they'll emulate what they've seen. They can say the right things the whole time they're growing up and you can too (about not using and learning from those with problems), but it's still **so easy** to fall into what you've been conditioned to see as "normal" in your life.
Create your boundaries, as needed. Figure out what they are and how you're planning on enforcing them. Where and when you'll take the kids away from drinking environments and what you'll do as a substitute?
"If I'd known then, what I know now...." I would have done so much differently. I've never wanted a divorce or to have the kids grow up without their dad (in other ways, he's been a wonderful dad), but I never, never, never wanted them to have to deal first-hand with alcohol problems. Leaving, whether for the day whenever he was drinking, or something more permanent, would have been the better choice for them in the long run. Hindsight is 20-20. Maybe some of it wouldn't have changed, as I couldn't have kept them away from the family reunions each year that revolve around drinking, but knowing this now, I wish I would have been educated earlier and tried harder is so many ways, or even asked here for advice on those things.
Congratulations to all of you who've put your children's long-term health above the difficulties of dealing with your A.
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