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Viewing posts from April, 2012

For Parents: Working with an Addicted Child

Posted by: Ross Laird in addictions development 1 year ago

After a public presentation on addictions a mother approached me, in that familiar way — hushed, conspiratorial, a sliver of shame buried in the hopefulness of her manner — and asked me what she can do about her son. Her boy is fifteen, plays online games for countless hours each week, hides himself in his locked room, screams at her when she tries to enter, seldom attends school, and seems to be sliding ever farther from her. She is terrified that he will simply forget everything and everyone, will become a ghost, and will disappear. She has heard these stories, and the many others that twist within her. And she is terrified. But she knows that most people will blame her for what has happened — her parenting must be at fault, they will say — so she downplays, even to herself, the seriousness of her son's predicament. She tells me about her family coming here from abroad, when her son was seven, and his subsequent struggles at school. She wonders if this might have played a role in what has happened. Possibly it has. Not only the exodus itself, which must have been terrifying for them all, but what came before and after: the tension and suspicion and hiding, then a long and uncertain journey, then a new culture, clashing values, poverty. Yet if they had not come, if they had not fled on motorcycles at night across the mountains, into a safer country and then across the sea, that boy would now be dead, or in prison with the rest of the family, or an expert, by now, in the firing of rocket propelled grenades.

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Parenting, Addictions, and Technology

Posted by: Ross Laird in addictions development technology 1 year, 1 month ago

For many parents, the cultures of technology — gaming, social media, texting — seem foreign, strange, and uninviting. At the same time, our kids have transferred much of their interpersonal developmental into the online world, where parents don't see what's happening. For the first time in the history of humanity, young people are growing up in a world their parents don't understand. In turn, those parents — whose fundamental job is to guide their kids through the labyrinth of childhood and adolescence — have themselves been drawn into a world of digital distraction: smart phones, television recording devices, DVD players in the car. The cultures of technology have created their own gravity, and we are all pulled inexorably toward it.

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