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Communication with your children is not always easy or successful. When your child is battling addiction, it can seem like it's impossible to speak to your child in such a way that she actually hears what you are saying!
However, communication is the most basic — and most essential — tool for ensuring that relationships function as well as they possibly might. Learning how to talk to — and listen to — your child when your child is in crisis and in the grips of an addiction may be the key that helps you maintain your own well-being, in addition to doing what you feel you can to help your child maintain his own.
When Hope Is All That You Have Left
Remember that your child will always be your child; this relationship may be strained to its breaking point by an addiction, but always remember that tough love is sometimes the only type of love that is appropriate. Loving your child does not mean that you should enable the addict; loving your child does mean that you must sometimes make very tough choices and take difficult stands. Parenthood is not easy, and it requires a lot more inner strength than many of us ever expect will be required.
Being an addict is not a cakewalk, either. Addictions are an unforgiving, relationship-wrecking, all-consuming toxic presence in the addicted child’s life. Addictions can be overcome, but the process can get downright ugly, and it can turn you and your child into one another’s archenemy and most reviled nemesis.
When you are at the end of your rope, don’t give up on the addict, but do not give in to the addict, either. Keep the distance you need to keep to be safe — physically, emotionally, and financially. Rather than disparaging your child, try to send three important messages to the child trapped within the addiction:
1. No matter how much we want to rescue you from this disease, we know that only you can take the steps necessary to take control of your life. Only you have the power to beat this addiction.
2. You have a support system surrounding you, and when you are ready to tackle your problem, we will be there to help you do the hard work that will be required of you. It may not always feel like it, but we will be acting out of love and respect for the person we know you to be, and who you once were before the addiction took over your choices.
3. You matter to us and many others in your life. You hold an important and irreplaceable role in our lives. We care deeply about your well-being and are here for you when you are ready to reach out.
Show Your Child That You Are There to Listen
Our nonverbal behavior makes up a hefty percentage of the message we send. If you truly care about communicating with your child, you will master the art of actually “showing” them how much you care. In terms of basic communication skills, this means that you will sit down in front of your child if she’s sitting, or stand in front of your child if he’s standing. You will make eye contact in a meaningful, connected way.
Make Eye Contact, but Don’t “Stare Down” Your Child
Don’t look at your child with eyes that communicate anger, disbelief, disrespect, or disdain. While this may be near-to-impossible for parents who’ve been lied to and taken advantage of by their children, looking into your child’s eyes with love and concern can be much more productive in opening the door for communication than staring past your child, refusing to make eye contact, or looking at him with contempt or derision.
Active Listening
Active listening is one of the most basic communication skills, and yet it is one that parents often have a hard time using with their children. Many of us raise our children to “Listen to us when we’re talking.” Unfortunately, all that many of us accomplish is getting our children to “shut up and tune out” when we are trying to tell them what we think they should do.
Active listening is about asking open-ended questions and responding to what a son or daughter is saying without jumping down their throat or sending nonverbal messages which suggest that you don’t care what they’re saying, or that you simply don’t believe what they’re saying. Active listening means that you’re checking in with your child to make sure you’re hearing what they are trying to tell you. Sometimes our words don’t always convey the full message we are trying to send. Try to have empathy with where your child is at in his life; empathy doesn’t mean you are “okay” with your child’s choices, just that you want to gain a better understanding of why he is making the choices he is making.
If you’re not sure that you’re understanding what your child is trying to say, check in with something like, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but what I hear you saying is...” Or, “Hang on a sec, if I’m hearing you right, I think what you’re trying to say is...”
Being willing to listen to your child greatly improves the chances that she will be willing to listen to you.
What If the Old Saying, “If You Can’t Say Something Good, Don’t Say Anything at All,” Doesn’t Fit?
What Should a Parent Do?
While focusing on the positive things in your relationship and your child’s life is definitely advised, sometimes it can seem impossible to find anything you could consider “good.” In these cases, don’t let yourself get overwhelmed in self-doubt or self-blame. Addicts choose their behaviors, and although they may be able to find a million ways to try and put the blame on you or their relationship with you, remember that every addict chooses to seek their next fix. Addiction is a disease that takes hold and does not discriminate against anyone based on their relationships with their families.
There’s an interesting truth about addiction and its hold on those people in the life of an addict: If you allow yourself to blame yourself in any way for your child’s addictions, you have effectively become an enabler. By taking the blame for your child’s poor choices, you have given tacit acceptance for your child to follow the addiction down the lonely path it will take him.
When you feel that there is no hope at present for establishing positive communication with your child, or you feel that you’re at the end of your rope, take time to care for yourself. Ideas for self-care range from individual self-care (meditation, hobbies, and so on) to creating clear boundaries in your relationship with the addict — and maintaining them — to reaching out to others, whether that means a professional counselor, a formal support group, or just a good friend. It helps to reach outside the immediate family for support — when everyone in a family feels like they are drowning, no one has the ability or the energy, as a rule, to try and save anyone else. And being a martyr to another’s pain is another way of enabling a child’s addiction to harm you.
In summary, it is essential to listen to your child, and while you can encourage her to seek help, you cannot move another person any closer to healing by forcing, berating, or shaming.
