Invisible scars: growing up in a family misusing alcohol or drugs
What is it like for children to see their parents using drugs or drinking heavily every day?
Try to imagine the kind of environment they have to grow up in and how it affects them.
"I would have hated to have been taken off my mum, I would have rather stayed here to look after her."
"... if your pals know that your ma's on drugs you get called a junkie, that's what happened to me at school, but I used not to let it bother me."
"I said to my ma a million times, I don't care what you do, I don't care how you do it, as long as they [siblings] don't see it, nothing, I don't care."
These children will often lead a chaotic lifestyle with frequent moves, lack of stable environment and a lack of attention and care. They may be left unsupervised at home, or else handed over to a large number of virtual strangers to be looked after, while their parents are out looking for drugs or ways of financing their habit. They will often live in households where parents and visitors use drugs openly, and may end up being neglected or, worse, abused.
Children may also be exposed to direct physical violence or emotional abuse if parents lose their temper when suffering from withdrawal. Very often, they will be brought up in an environment of chronic poverty and debts, homelessness, prostitution and crime.
So how do these children learn to cope and what do they do in order to survive? Very quickly, they will learn that they need to look after themselves, and may also start looking after their parent or parents, and younger brothers or sisters. They may feel isolated and ashamed, due to the stigma of having a parent who misuses drugs or alcohol. Their feelings of loyalty towards their parents will be strong, even if their parents are neglecting them. Having frequently been left on their own, children will find it difficult to respond to boundaries and set routines. They will have to take on a lot of responsibility from an early age and will probably not have the opportunity to behave in a child-like manner. Their fear of abandonment may be strong and they are likely to find it difficult to form attachments.
What we do know is that these children will need a lot of support and help in coming to terms with these emotions, learning to trust new carers, giving up responsibility for their birth parents and siblings, and also dealing with their anxieties and stress about their own well-being and safety. Therapy may have an important part to play in this process, but what these children will need above all else is a new permanent family who can give them gentle and consistent parenting with clear boundaries, and a stable, caring and loving environment for them to grow up and develop in.
Quotes taken from Children exposed to parental substance misuse. Implications for family placement, edited by Rena Phillips.
Originally published in the Be My Parent newspaper in September 2005.
This article is published with the kind permission of the people involved. You may download it for your own reference but if you wish to use it for any other purpose, please contact Be My Parent for authorisation: Be My Parent, BAAF, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Telephone: 020 7421 2666/5/4.
Last updated: 06 November 08
