Supporting your son or daughter in recovery

Recovery is a journey filled with challenges. For many teenagers, recovery means developing a new lifestyle: different friends, different activities, different attitudes. This can be frightening. Your love and support can be essential to helping them maintain these changes in their lives.

It is not only a difficult time for your teen. It can be difficult for you as well. You might be wondering if they will be able to maintain these changes. You might also be feeling nervous about letting them make their own decisions and trusting them to make healthy choices. These are normal feelings.

What can I expect?

Recovery is a process that continues long after your child has stopped gambling or using alcohol and other drugs. Whether your child went through formal treatment, used a support group or attended outpatient counselling, they have learned many new things and this can be overwhelming.

Sometimes relapse happens. Your son or daughter might go back to drinking, using other drugs or gambling. Often this is a one-time slip and your teen will learn from the experience and get back on track. Sometimes, the use continues and your son or daughter will return to the old behaviour. While nobody wants to encourage slips or relapses, they are often a part of recovery. If your teen relapses, help them to get back on track. Remember the progress that has been made so far. What is important is to help them get back on track without feeling like they have failed.

Talking with other parents about their successful strategies, and continuing to attend family counselling or other treatment options is important. Don’t allow the current problem to make you forget the success you’ve had so far. Things will likely get back on track soon enough. Try to treat your teen as if they will succeed. It can be hard to let go of some of the disappointments of the past, but having expectations of success is more likely to bring success.

Also remember that you can help shape your teen’s behaviour. You can behave in a way that helps them to keep using, or in a way that helps them to stop. Behaviour that helps using is sometimes called “enabling.” Parents often do this out of love for their child. Enabling will help your child in the moment but in the long run it hurts. Try not to make excuses for your child’s behaviour, cover up mistakes they make, bail them out of trouble or simply ignore the problems. They need to be accountable for their actions and their decisions. This is an important part of sobriety and of growing up.

While it is important to be aware of your teen’s friends and activities, they will still need to face life without your help sometimes. You can be there for your teen, but you will not be able to help them through every struggle. Supporting your teen in recovery includes realizing that they are separate from you. They will need to make their own choices and learn from the consequences of these choices.

How will this affect the rest of the family?

Addiction affects everyone in the family. Just because your teen is in recovery does not mean old problems will just go away. Everyone has been affected and everyone needs to learn new ways of responding. Try to live in the present. It is natural to treat your teen as you did when they were using, not acknowledging the changes they have made. Set boundaries appropriate to their current behaviour. Respond to current breaches of rules, don’t hold grudges or bring up the past. Encourage your teen, as well as others in the family, to attend a support group. Encourage your teen to attend, but remember, although you can provide support, you cannot force recovery. It may be a good idea to get family counselling to help everyone learn new ways of responding.

The Protection of Children Abusing Drugs Act (PChAD)

Effective July 1, 2006, the PChAD Act gives you another option to help your child when all treatment options have been tried or if your child is refusing help. If your child is under 18 and has a serious alcohol or other drug problem that has caused or is likely to cause harm to them or others, you can ask the court to have your child admitted to a protective safe house for up to five days. If the court supports your request, your child will have a safe and supportive setting at the protective safe house to begin detoxification, and an AADAC counsellor will help you and your child develop a treatment plan to follow after your child leaves the protective safe house. For more information about PChAD and the court-ordered detox and assessment program, please see “What if I’ve tried every option?” in this series.

For more information

AADAC staff understands that everyone’s needs are different. Whether you want to prevent your child from using alcohol, tobacco or other drugs, or you want to help your child deal with a drug problem, we can help. From information and prevention programs to group and family counselling, outpatient and residential treatment, and even a wilderness program, AADAC and its Funded Services offer a full range of services to help your child and your family.

For more information, contact your local AADAC office or call the AADAC Help Line at 1-866-33AADAC. We are available to give you information and support.