For most of us, family is one of the major reasons that we go into recovery. Wanting to be a good partner, a good parent, a good friend is more pressing to recovery than wanting to take care of ourselves. While it’s important for our perspective to shift and for us to learn the value of taking care of ourselves, it’s also important to acknowledge that family is one of the most important things in your life. Being open, honest, and involving family including your kids in your recovery is important for you and for them, because it allows you to build a relationship based on truth, honesty, and where you’re actually at in your life.
Using your addiction recovery as an example for your kids means you’re taking steps to stop the cycle of inherited substance abuse. It means you’re taking your kids on your journey with you and that will inspire them for the future. Substance use disorders are also remarkably common. In 2023, 48.5 million Americans aged 12 or older qualified for a diagnosis. Being open and honest about your health problems and the steps you’re taking to get help will help you to make a difference for your family.
Be Honest
It’s important to be honest with your kids. No matter what their age, they know something is wrong. Being open about it means you create room for learning experiences and for understanding. Many parents try to hide substance abuse from their kids because they are ashamed of it. At the same time, doing so doesn’t teach your kids that substance abuse is a problem, only that they have to hide it. Passing on stigma doesn’t help your kids to protect themselves when trauma starts becoming an issue later in life.
That means:
- Sharing that you have an addiction and being open about what that means. Substance use disorders are an illness and qualify as a medical disorder. Think about how you’d tell your kids if you had cancer and try to use much of the same language.
- Talking about how you’re struggling and that you lose control and that you need help getting it back.
- Share the steps you’re going to take to get better and talk about what it will be like for your kids.
Telling your kids that you’re sick means telling them you can’t do something, that you’ve reached a point where you need help, and that you’re going to ask for it. Chances are, you’ve worked with your kids on them asking for help with things like tying shoes or getting something off of a high shelf. Riding a bike is also a good analogy because you can talk about how your kids probably needed help getting started and then training wheels, and then they could bike by themselves – but when the training wheels came off things were harder again. You can share that as part of your own process.
Show Accountability
Showing accountability is an important part of being a good example. That means owning up to your mistakes, admitting you’ve made wrong choices, and taking a “I am going to fix things” approach. Accountability shows your kids that it’s okay to make mistakes, even big ones. It also shows your kids that you openly admit to having made the wrong choices. If you normalize that, you create room for your kids to share when they make mistakes as well.
What does accountability look like?
- Owning up to mistakes without excuses, “I let this get too far”, “I made bad choices”, “I hurt you”, “I have to fix things I’ve broken”.
- Taking steps to fix things, “I have to go to rehab because I need help fixing things”
- Resolve things and make space for kids to share if you’ve hurt them
Accountability is about rebuilding trust but it’s also about modeling to kids that they can make mistakes and still fix them and move forward.
Model Healthy Behavior
Addiction recovery is very often about building a healthy and happy life where you don’t need drugs and alcohol. That should mean exercise, healthy meals, doing fun activities, taking time for family, building support networks, managing stress, and prioritizing self-care. Often, you can involve your family in this journey. That means you can exercise and go for walks with kids, make healthy eating part of a family norm, talking to kids and setting boundaries for yourself around self-care and time to yourself, and making space for everyone to process stress and emotions. That will give your kids room to learn to do the healthy things and to take care of themselves as well.
Create Room for Open Communication
No matter what age your kids are, they will have questions, they will have things to say, and they will want to know what’s going on. If you create room for open communication, you can talk about things, resolve them, and make them learning experiences. For example, if you share your progress with rehab as you move through it, you’ll be able to create discussions around struggling with things and having a hard time. You’ll be able to be vulnerable with your kids and that means they can be vulnerable to you as well.
Highlight the Power of Change
Rehab and addiction treatment will change you. It’s important to show to your kids that change happens and that they can be part of that. Normally, that means taking time to discuss changes, to understanding what you’ve learned from treatment, to understand where you’ve failed and where you’ve gotten stronger. You can then talk about that with kids and make them part of your journey. For example, you can start having a weekly talk with kids where everyone shares what they learned that week. You create opportunities for showing kids that you can grow and change at any age and create room for sharing both ways.
Involve Your Kids in Therapy
Having a parent with a substance abuse problem is traumatic, no matter how young your kids are. Increasingly, rehab centers offer room to bring your kids to therapy, to involve them in recovery, and to get daycare for kids so they can go with you even to residential centers. That means you’ll be able to actively have sessions with your kids, to show kids how much you’re growing, and to have someone to help you recognize where kids are struggling with your substance use disorder – so they can also get help.
Family therapy can help you to acknowledge and respond to trauma, to remediate family hierarchy issues, and to ensure that everyone has space to talk about trauma. Most importantly, you should look for that even if it’s not part of your primary addiction treatment.
Eventually, your family are always going to be an important part of addiction recovery. Involving them in every step of the process, creating room for open communication, and being honest will ensure that they can learn by example, can learn that substances are dangerous, and potentially have the tools to stay out of harm’s way as they get older.
That will mean more work, more working on yourself, and more working to actively share now but will have benefits for your relationship with your kids far into the future.
