Summer is finally upon us! The end of the school year always brings lots of fun and exciting activities for households with school-aged youth. Summertime is such a great time for families to spend time together and enjoy the nice weather and outdoor activities. Today’s blog is going to address a Risk Factor. I usually like my blogs to focus on the positive and promoting protective factors as much as possible, however sometimes it is necessary for us to talk about the things that put our kids at a higher risk for using substances. The risk factor I am going to talk about today is one that we see frequently in our society. Today we are going to be taking a deeper dive into the Risk Factor of Favorable Attitudes towards Drugs.
I encourage you to think for a moment about your own attitudes towards drugs, as well as the attitudes of the people around you. Perhaps you have negative attitudes towards drugs like heroin or cocaine, but what about alcohol and tobacco? When I think of Summer my mind automatically goes to the number of families spending time at the river or lake on the weekends. I think most people would agree that our society has favorable attitudes towards drinking a “cold beer” on a hot summer day at the river or having a glass of wine with dinner after a long day at work. We see these attitudes depicted through Tiktok videos, facebook posts, our favorite shows, and advertisements for the products themselves.
Now that you have examined your own attitudes towards drugs, lets talk about our kids. Do you know what kind of attitude your child has about substances like alcohol or tobacco? Do they think that it makes you look more grown up to vape nicotine? Do they feel that the best way to relax is to drink a beer at the end of the day? Does your child think that using cannabis is the best way to deal with stress? Research tells us that youth who have favorable attitudes towards drugs are at a higher risk for using them. The fact is that drugs like alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana have completely different effects on a developing brain. As parents, most of us can agree that we definitely don’t want anything to get in the way of our children’s development. So what can we do?
In order to address this risk factor we must first ask ourselves, how do our children develop attitudes about drugs? This answer is probably more complicated than we would like, and the answer is most likely through a variety of influences. Youth could develop attitudes about drugs from education, their peers, advertisements, social media, movies, television shows, or even family members. These attitudes generally start developing at a very young age, and can easily change as they grow older and are influenced by other people or media. While it may not be possible to completely control your child’s attitude towards drugs, please don’t doubt your ability as a parent to influence them. Our children are surrounded by influences everyday through media and the world around them, and ultimately will look to you as their parent and trusted caregiver to help them develop healthy attitudes. For example, say the child is learning in health class about the negative effects of alcohol on a developing brain. Then they hear some peers at school talking about how much fun they had drinking excessive amounts alcohol. Now there is a conflict between two influences. We know that when we are having these conflicting thoughts we often look to what we know to help us as we develop our own opinions, and good or bad, what we know is often what we learned at home.
In conclusion, favorable attitudes towards drugs is a risk factor that puts youth at a higher risk for using substances. Substance use has a different effect on a developing brain. Youth attitudes are developed and influenced by many factors, and as parents the best we can do for our child is to help them develop heathy attitudes about substances.