Substance Abuse In Children

Children are at an important stage in life and whatever happens to them during this stage will mold them for the rest of their lives. This can include their future relationships, behaviors, or even their future education. One of the most influential role models in a child’s life is their parents, many children like to be like their parents and some even pretend to be their parents. When something is wrong with adults many children can pick up on these emotions that they are conveying. When a parent has a problem with substance abuse a child can also pick up on this. Some children may see this as normal and others may blame themselves for what is wrong with their parent does. Because if this abnormal childhood they go through these children …show more content…
The assumption made by most children’s protection, justice, addictions and mental health professionals is that one of the foundations of healthy and normative biopsychosocial development is an adequate attachment and bond to serve the mental health and developmental needs of the child… When parents are heavily into substance abuse and/or an addictions lifestyle, there is likely very little energy put into enabling and retaining healthy attachment and bond that is child centered (Kimberly) (2010). The children need to have a healthy social bond supported, hopefully one that has sufficient continuity to enable more normative development (Kimberly) (2010) so when a parent is distracted by substance abuse a child may start to feel the consequences of that. The relationship between substance use disorders (SUDs) and child maltreatment is compelling and undeniable. More than eight million children in the United States live with at least one parent who abused or was dependent on alcohol or an illicit drug during the past year. These children face a heightened risk of maltreatment. One study, for example, showed that children of parents with SUDs are nearly three times more likely to be abused and more than four times more likely to be neglected than children of parents who do not abuse substances (Brouwer) …show more content…
Individuals participated in one-hour semi-structured interviews. Audiotapes were transcribed verbatim, and submitted to a content analysis for primary themes and patterns. Results revealed seven major areas of impact: 1) Low self-esteem, 2) depression, 3) drug/alcohol abuse, 4) lack of trust, 5) alienation from own children, 6) divorce, 7) other. About one third of the participants reported having serious problems with drugs and/or alcohol at some point in their lives… Some recognized that they were drawn to substance abuse as a way to escape the feelings of pain and loss that they felt as young children. In many, but again not all cases, the alienating parents were emotionally abusive in their attempts to subjugate the child’s independent thoughts and feelings to their will (Baker) (2005). This is a reason why the child would be more likely themselves to abuse substances and keep the cycle of abuse