Tough Love or Tender Loving Care? A Guide to Helping Your Teen Through Addiction

Tough Love or Tender Loving Care A Guide to Helping Your Teen Through Addiction

Helping a teen through addiction is one of the hardest things any parent could have to experience. Yet this very predicament is what a startling number of parents currently face, in the worst addiction epidemic on record. Roughly 5 percent of teens (ages 12-17) suffer from drug or alcohol addiction, according to 2016 findings by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). The number is substantially higher among young adults (ages 18-25).

From my own experience as an addiction clinician, I’ve found that many of the young adult clients I work with first began to dabble with drugs or alcohol in their teens, so that by the time they reach their young adult years, they are battling full-blown addiction. (Indeed, young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 seem to suffer from the highest prevalence of substance abuse, according to the NSDUH.)

For the millions of parents who find themselves in the devastating scenario of helping a teen through addiction or a developing addiction, it can be excruciatingly hard to know how to support their loved one’s recovery. A very common parental dilemma in these situations: whether to exercise tough love or take a more tender and loving approach. In the advice that follows, I’ll propose that the most effective parenting response will be both firm and loving, combining elements of both approaches.

The Case for a “Firm but Loving” Parenting Approach

Nobody signs up for addiction. Even those with poor impulse control, a developing brain, and a bad case of acne don’t set out to get hooked on a substance. On the one hand, an isolated incident of drug or alcohol abuse might be explained as teen rebelliousness and acting out, or a desire to test boundaries or experiment. A pattern of substance abuse, on the other hand, more often indicates that your teen is dealing with unresolved emotional pain, stress, and/or symptoms of an undiagnosed co-occurring disorder like anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. (There’s a good chance that one or more of these contributing factors is operative even in situations where peer pressure and hanging around the wrong crowd have played a role.)

The strong likelihood that your child is turning to drugs and alcohol in order to cope with unresolved pain should therefore prompt solution-oriented empathy and compassion before judgment and punishment. The last thing that anyone experiencing pain needs is more stigmatization, and the more your child senses your love and support, the more motivated they will be to pursue a way out of addiction.

Recent findings from addiction science support this claim in another way, suggesting, in the words of Johann Hari, in his book Chasing the Scream, that “the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety—it’s connection.” I’ve found the same to be true: genuine human connection, within relationships of love and support, can be the very thing that motivates someone to seek treatment, setting them on the road to long-term recovery. A teenaged child will be more likely to experience positive connections with Mom or Dad when they feel genuinely and unconditionally loved and supported, rather than an object of punitive wrath.

Loving vs. Enabling a Teen with Addiction

There is a critical distinction to be made, however, between a loving approach and parenting that actually “enables” or encourages a child’s addiction. A truly loving approach will not enable addiction, by setting firm boundaries. That may require:

  • Ending forms of parental help or protection that are disincentives for a child to get help for addiction or stick with recovery. An example might be cutting off their access to your bank account or taking away their cell phone, so it’s harder for them to buy drugs.
  • Allowing your child to experience the painful negative consequences of their behavior. One example might be calling the police when you find illicit drugs in the house, knowing full well that your child will be in bigger trouble. Another example might be not coming to your child’s rescue when, after binge drinking the night before, they’re sleeping in on a school day.

By communicating clear, consistent rules and expectations for behavior and disciplining your child with “natural consequences,” you’ll be setting firm boundaries that encourage your child’s recovery.

How to Help a Teen Feel Loved and Supported

Consider pairing firm boundaries with unconditional love, then, by using the following tips on helping your child feel loved and supported:

  • Look for daily opportunities to check in with your child about how they are feeling.
  • Regularly dispense hugs and say “I love you.”
  • Take part in family therapy with your child, so that you can improve your communication and address dysfunctional dynamics in your relationship that may be enabling their addiction.
  • Cultivate positive connections with your child, by spending quality time with them on a regular basis.
  • When you talk with your child about their addiction, avoid harsh, judgmental language that can amplify their feelings of shame and stigmatization, thereby pushing them away from you and potentially further into addiction.
  • Offer positive incentives for recovery wherever possible. In the terminology of the familiar “carrot-and-stick” analogy, choose the carrot over the stick.

Mandating Your Child Get Treatment

Finally, remember that your teenager is still a minor and you are their guardian, regardless of what they think. That means you have the legal right to mandate they receive drug or alcohol treatment, so long as they are 17 years or younger. You may need to exercise this right—even if your teen kicks and screams their way to rehab and won’t thank you until years later when they’re all grown-up.


About the Author: Anna Ciulla

Anna Ciulla is the Vice President of Clinical and Medical Services at Beach House Center for Recovery where she is responsible for designing, implementing and supervising the delivery of the latest evidence-based therapies for treating substance use disorders. Anna has a passion for helping clients with substance use and co-occurring disorders achieve successful long-term recovery.  

 

 

 

3 Comments

Lily

How do you do this with a spouse? What if tough love doesn’t work and they die? How do you deal with the loss? The guilt the shame? How do you let go of that? After 40 years.

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Pauline

I’m reading this from the point of view of a parent with a teenager addicted to computer games. There’s not enough out there for this.

Reply
Angela

As a parent of two grown children, I will remind Pauline that SHE is the parent! That being said, she has the authority to remove the computer, gaming system, etc. which her teen is using. And if that isn’t enough, she should remind her teen that the house is also hers. That gives her the right to enforce whatever rules she needs to under her roof. If her son does not comply, take everything from his room except bedding and a few sets of clothes. Let him know that everything he has is only out of the kindness of his mom’s heart. There is no law which states that a parent has to provide anymore that the necessities for a child. I guarantee, after a few weeks of this, he will no longer have a problem following mom’s rules, and the video game issue will be solved! Parents today are too worried about being their kids’ friend. A friend cannot effectively enforce rules or teach discipline. A parent is needed for that.

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So ready to get started with ‘Hey Little Warrior’ in Melbourne. This is my fourth time this year presenting this workshop in Melbourne and we sell out every time.

So what do we do here?! We dive into how to support young children with anxiety. It’s my favourite thing to talk about. I love it. Even more than whether or not I want dessert. We talk about new ways to work with anxiety in littles so they can feel braver and bigger in the presence of it. This workshop is loaded with practical strategies. I love presenting this workshop.

(And yes - always yes to dessert. As if I would ever skip the most important meal of the day. Pffftt.)

@compass_australia
They’re often called sensory preferences, but they’re sensory needs.

In our adult worlds we can move our bodies and ourselves to seek regulation. If we don’t like noise we’re less likely to be DJs for example. If we don’t love heights we’re less likely to be pilots or skydivers. If we feel overwhelmed, we can step outside, go into an office, go to the bathroom, or pop on headphones for a break. If we need to move, we can stand, walk to get a tea. At school, this is so much harder.

When bodies don’t feel safe, there will be anxiety. This will potentially drive fight (anger, tantrums), flight (avoidance, running away, movement), or shutdown (in quiet distress and can’t learn). 

These are physiological issues NOT behavioural ones.

Whenever we can, we need to support physiological safety by accommodating sensory needs AND support brave behaviour. What’s tricky is disentangling anxiety driven by unmet sensory needs, from anxiety driven by brave behaviour.

The way through is to support their physiological needs, then move them towards brave behaviour.

Schools want to support this. They want all kids to be happy and the best they can be, but there will be a limit on their capacity to support this - not because they don’t want to, but because of a scarcity of resources.

There will often be many children with different physiological needs. Outside school there is nowhere else that has to accommodate so many individual needs, because as adults we won’t be drawn to environments that don’t feel okay. In contrast, school requires all kids to attend and stay regulated in the one environment.

For now, we don’t have a lot of options. Yes there are schools outside mainstream, and yes there is home school, but these options aren’t available to everyone.

So, until mainstream schools are supported with the resources (staff, spaces, small classes, less demand on curriculum … and the list goes on), what can we do?

- Help school with specific ways to support your child’s physiology while being mindful that teachers are also attending to the needs of 25+ other nervous systems. But be specific.
- Limit the list. Make this a ‘bare minimum needs’ list, not a ‘preferences’ one.♥️
Brave often doesn’t feel like ‘brave’. Most often, it feels like anxiety. If there is something brave, important, new, hard, there will always be anxiety right behind it. It’s the feeling of anxiety that makes it something brave - and brave is different for everyone.♥️

#anxietyawareness #childanxiety #anxietysupport #anxietyinkids #parent #positiveparenting
Recently I chatted with Sharon from the ADHD Families Podcast. I loved this chat. We took a dive into anxiety and ADHD, including anxiety at school and some strategies for schools and parents to support kiddos with anxiety and ADHD. Listen to the full episode 
here https://www.thefunctionalfamily.com/podcasts/adhd-families-podcast

thefunctionalfamily
Remember the power of ‘AND’. 

As long as they are actually safe:

They can feel anxious AND do brave.

They can feel like they aren’t ready for brave, AND be ready brave.

They can wish to avoid AND they can stay (or not be taken home).

They can be angry, anxious, and push us away AND we can look after them through the feelings without avoiding the brave/ new, hard/ important. 

We can wish for their anxiety, anger, sadness to be gone AND we can be with them without needing them to be different.

We can believe them (that they are anxious, scared, angry) AND believe in them (that they are capable).

When we hold their anxiety AND their capacity for brave, in equal measure and with compassion, we can show them that their anxiety doesn’t cancel their brave.♥️

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