Reply to S/o How can you minimize the chance your kid will get into drugs in high school?

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Reply to "S/o How can you minimize the chance your kid will get into drugs in high school?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I too am amazed by some of the keep them busy suggestions.   #1 factor is are the friends doing it?   And yes the friends can have all A's and take APs and tons of extra curriculars and still do drugs.  
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Of course they can, and any parent who believes they can totally control their children's lives is delusional.   That said, idle hands are the devil's playthings, and often it is boredom that leads to some of the behavior.[/quote]

The problem with this line of thinking is that we've raised a generation of children who don't know how to entertain themselves.  We've scheduled them up so much that they don't know what to do when they have down time.  They can't keep being overscheduled forever -- at some point they will have empty time on their hands.  And they won't know how to handle it.  Boredom is a fact of life.  All people at some point in their lives experience boredom and it is certainly not the parents' job to keep their children run run running around so they are never ever bored.  The inability to know what to do with time makes kids much more vulnerable to drug abuse cause they have to do something to wave the boredom away.[/quote]

That's got nothing to do with what I have to say.  Where am I talking about overscheduling?    Do you really think the band geeks were band geeks because their moms said they had to do band?  Do you really think that EVERY kid who CHOSE to step up and lead a club, develop a hobby, practice a sports, try out for the lead in a play, chose intensified classes... did this solely because their parents were afraid they would fall to pieces with a minute of down-time?  My kid plays three sports (mostly all year round with varying degrees of intensity).  I "enable" in that I am willing to pay for lessons and drive.  I drew the line at 4.  The kid is thriving - he has friends and good grades.  He has time to be bored - so terribly bored he suggested we go for a bike ride today, which we did.

Yes, there is a lot to learn from boredom, but plenty of kids of high school age do know how to entertain themselves.  I don't know about your high school experience, but in mine there was some room for drug experimentation (with the band geeks and drama kids), but even then my friends and I thought the stoners were boring.[/quote]

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