Focusing On Success in Your Prevention Efforts

Raising kids in today’s society is challenging. The internet is providing social media networks that open up their communications to others who may be loaded with false information or deceit. What do you do to protect them against this? Focusing on and spending time validating what you want to see more of is a great strategy.

I’ve worked for years teaching kids the truth about drugs and alcohol. I’ve discovered the biggest error in prevention efforts is that they lead in with ‘promotional’ messages about the effects of drugs and alcohol. When a parent or teacher opens up a conversation teaching kids how a drug will make them feel in a positive way, you leave a lasting impression. Minimally, that method will make them curious as to why or how drugs do that.

Instead a better approach is to lay out some of the negative, damaging or harmful effects of drugs. Focus on the short term results as kids will excuse experimenting with drugs or alcohol and justify it by saying, “I’m only trying it” or “I don’t use it much” or “It’s not a drug as it’s grown”.

The short term effects of drugs are listed in booklets called “Talking to kids about drugs”, “Drug Facts”, “Understanding addiction” and DVDs such as “Marijuana the Myth” and “The Truth about Drugs”. I recommend you get these from us to assist you in properly educating your kids about the dangers of drugs.

Validating What You Want More Of

Now for the really important news. By placing a lot of attention and emphasis on the valuable things in life and pretty much ignoring what you don’t want, you can create wonderful circumstances for your family.

Find out what your kids want to excel in and figure out intelligent and crafty ways to make these things truly rewarding to their lives and yours. Conspire with others to set them up for their success and winning in life.

Celebrating the successes of your kids is one way to focus on the positives in life. Really acknowledging their hard work and their skills in a genuine way, can produce better prevention efforts than weeks of lectures on drugs.

Vital: insure that the major reward of success or a job well done is the completion of the task, the skills learnt in doing it and the activity itself. Never make the reward more valuable than the task. Remember the pay off for you and them is the positive activity not the exchange or reward for doing it. Make sure kids do things because they are right, not for rewards.

Tibor A. Palatinus

Drug Prevention Specialist