Growing Up With a Functional Alcoholic/Addict Parent (The Uncomfortable Truth)

Does my drinking, or really any substance use for that matter, affect my kids? Well, of course it affects your kids. That's not really. Not even the good question. The good question is, how does it affect your kids? That's what we're going to be covering in today's video. Now, fair warning, some of these things might be a little bit difficult to hear, but nonetheless, we need to hear it. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel Down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth and this YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can get your life and your family back on track. And on this channel, we try really hard to help you understand addiction from every single angle. And today we're going to be looking at it from the child's point of view. We're going to focus in specifically on how a parent's alcohol or other substance use or abuse affects you as a kid and even as an adult. Now, I think to some level some of this stuff is going to be pretty obvious. Now, you know what? I'm going to skip the really obvious stuff, like if it's extreme like heroin addiction or meth addiction and the parent's not functioning and maybe the parent doesn't even have custody of the kids, or there's a tremendous amount of violence in the home, like those extreme kinds of effects I'm not even going to cover because honestly, that's pretty obvious. What I'm going to talk about in this video is how does even moderate substance abuse affect your children? So not the crazy off the charts Lifetime movie kind, just like the regular everyday, maybe like functional alcoholism or functional addiction, if that's such a thing, affect your family and specifically your children. Now, before I go too far into that part, if you want to know if you have an addiction or if a loved one has an addiction, and you want to know exactly how, how severe that problem is, I've put a link in the description for you to download the actual real life criteria for substance use disorder so that those criteria account for drugs, alcohol, any kind of addiction. It's going to walk you through the process of how do you actually diagnose that and how do you decide how severe the problem is? The links in the description, you can download that right after you watch this video. All right, back to our topic. I've broken this down for you into five categories. Some of these things may seem a little obvious, and some of these things probably, probably will not seem so obvious. The first one, I'm going to start out with is modeling when you're using substances, you are modeling that behavior for your kid. That may be the obvious part, but let's go a little bit deeper into it. If you use substances in your house, like drinking or any kind of substances, and that's the way adults in the family have fun or they party or that's when they're happiest or excited, it may come across to your kid like really glorified, like, oh, that's how adults are happy. That's how adults connect. When I get older, I'm going to do that. So it may seem really cool or awesome to them. That's one thing. But there are a lot of other ways that using substances model things for your kids. If you're using substances to help you cope with stress or cope with problems, or not solve problems, then you're also modeling that for your kids. You're using it as a primary coping skill which your kids are picking up on. Like, this is the way you get through tough stuff. This is the way you deal with a hard day at work. Or for example, if you're the kind of person who maybe has a few drinks when you come home from work because that helps you relax and calm down, you're also modeling that for your kids that that's just normal everyday life and that's how things are done. Now, another way that substance use affects your kids is the fact that if you have a substance use issue, even a moderate substance use issue, it's going to make you a lot less consistent with how you show up in their lives. Now, maybe you're there every day, maybe you're a stay at home mom. So I'm not saying it makes you necessarily be physically not there, although that is a thing that it could definitely cause. I'm talking about emotionally consistent. A lot of kids that grow up in homes where their substance abuse problems feel like they don't know what to expect from their parent when they get home. Or they feel like sometimes mommy is so fun and she's so exciting and I love to be around her and she's like the most awesome mom. And sometimes she's angry and mad and she gets mad at me and I don't know why or what I even did because yesterday it was great and today it's terrible. It's going to make you inconsistent naturally because it affects your mood and it makes your mood inconsistent because if you are using substances, you're high or you're intoxicated, which then affects how you perceive and interact in the world, or if you're not high or not intoxicated, but you've been in a pattern of that, then you're going to be in a little bit of withdrawal, or you're going to be having a hangover, or you're going to be coming down the downside of that, which is then going to affect your mood, how you perceive the world, how you're able to problem solve and cope with things, which is going to make you come across as inconsistent in how you're parenting and relating to your kid. So it's not just inconsistency when the substances are in play. It's inconsistency all the time. It's the ups and downs, the back and forth that can be very problematic for children. The third way your substance use impacts your kids is because your substance use probably impacts your other relationships, like with your spouse or with your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your partner or your parents or your friends. And your kids are watching those relationships as well. So maybe you use substances and you think, well, it doesn't affect my kids because they don't even know. It doesn't matter if they know it's affecting you. So it's affecting them because, let's say in your marriage, your spouse is always upset with you because of your substance use. And there's tension and fighting and arguments between you and your spouse. Guess what? That trickles down onto your kid. Not only are you modeling that kind of behavior, that this is how adults work out problems, but just your general energy, right? If you're upset or if you've had an argument yesterday, your mom and dad aren't talking, and there's conflict between the parent and the grandparents, all of that, all of your relationship issues trickle down onto your children because those relationships have a huge impact on you. You know, I've seen a lot of families where maybe one parent had a substance abuse problem and the two parents fight about it a lot, and the kids feel stuck in the middle. They may align with the parent who doesn't use and they may feel like that they have to be the parent of the one that does use. Like they have to spy on them or tell on them, or maybe they have to cover for them because they know that mommy was drinking, but daddy will get mad if he knows it. So you have to cover for them and it puts the kid in a real parentified type of situation, which doesn' allow a kid to be a kid. Now, another way substance use can affect your kids is it affects your ability to be A good provider. Now, you may be watching this, and you may be thinking, I don't know what you're talking about, Amber. I'm really successful. We have tons of money in this house. And that may be true, but my guess is if you have even a moderate substance use problem, that it is impacting your work in some kind of way. If nothing else, you're spending a lot of money on substances, and that money could be going to something more productive, I guess. And in an extreme situation, when a parent has a substance abuse problem, they may have difficulty keeping a job, or they may be spending so much money on substances that it's making it hard for the family to pay bills. Now, another way that substances affect your kids, and this one may not be quite as obvious as some of the others, is it really affects your ability to be present with your kids, meaning emotionally there and connected. Now, I think being present with your kids is probably one of the hardest things that parents have to do. I know for me personally, it's. It's the most difficult part, right? Because we're juggling so many things. Work and paying bills and household chores and picking up kids from school and going to soccer games and arranging this and dealing with our spouse. There's so many things that adults are dealing with. It's difficult, even in the best of situations, to be emotionally present with your kid when they're having a problem, when they're telling you about silly stuff that matters to them but doesn't matter to you when you're helping them with their homework is hard enough to really be engaged with that. But when you layer substances on the top, then you get a real inconsistency with your ability to be present. Now, maybe when you drink or use, it relaxes you up and your child finds you more approachable. I've definitely seen that in a lot of situations, which may seem kind of good in some ways, but if you think about it, what is that really modeling for your kid? And if the substance is the thing that's making you lighten up and be even funner or a better parent, then that probably means that. That you're using it to a degree. That when you're not, then maybe you're not as good of a parent and you're not as present or fun to be around. Maybe you're irritable or grumpy or tired or hungover or you feel sick. You can't deny that those things impact your ability to be present with your child. Now, I know a lot of this may be really hard to hear, but sometimes we just got to get honest with ourselves. I don't want you to be thinking about this and thinking, oh my gosh, I'm the worst parent ever and I ruined it. I'm not saying that at all. You can still be a good parent and struggle with a substance abuse problem, but it is going to have some effect on your kid. In fact, what I'd really like to ask you to do is if somebody else's substance abuse ever affected your life as a child growing up, I would love for you to tell me about that in the comments. What effects did it have on you as a kid and does it still have effects on you now? Maybe some good effects and maybe some bad effects, but hearing about your experience may help the rest of us really shed light on it and understand the long term implications. Which is exactly why I want you to watch this video next, because it's all about the long term effects. How does what happened to me as a kid now play into my life as an adult? I'll put it right up here. All you have to do is click on it.