The Klein Crew

So many teens really have nothing much to do with their parents - they
don't communicate, the parents don't know their friends, the kids would
never confide in their parents, ask their advice, care about what they
think. Interestingly, by focusing on our relationship first, I think we
DO tend to have far more influence ```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Bob,
I feel for you about your 15 year old niece...I do But. The above is so very very true, I do not like to or ever want to put blame on any one for someone's drug use But there are things in life that can help you make the decision to use or not use drugs and If a child isn't close to there parents,siblings then that could really affect them to the point of not really knowing who they are or if they are really cared for or loved.
When I was young My parents owned a bar, so I grew up in bars and did my share of sipping some wine , beer, whatever very early on, I thought I had a close relationship with my parents but now as I look back NO I did not, they both worked, and they didn't know my friends, never really knew where I was or who I was with. They didn't do that on purpose, they did the best they knew how, they thought by my father holding down a full time job in NYC and then coming back to Jersey at night and working at the bar with my Mom was for the good of our family...Money was that way of thinking...anyway this is my story please do not rip my head off about how I believe... For ME, I think the drinking lead to OK now I want to try the High from POT, which led to OK now I want to try the High from acid, then Coke which almost killed me, made me want to kill myself.... I moved out of my folks home at age 18 so they really didn't know I was using drugs ...just drinking, which if you own a bar and are with people that drink everyday that is normal...doesn't every body drink daily...good day have a drink, BAD Day must drink...that's what I saw...
when I was 23 I packed up all I owned and moved across country to AZ. I was trying to "find" myself, I was running from myself but when I got to AZ who met me at the door but me...the drugs and all the kind of people that went with that life. My family caught wind of what I mess I was. My brother ( not my father mind you) flew out to AZ to take me back to Jersey to put me away (rehab) well I was such a great manipulate that I talked my way out of that, they threatened me that I could never see my nephews again and yadda yadda yadda, none of that would have stopped me from using the drugs not even if they did haul me off and lock me up, NO ONE could stop another person from , drinking, or drug use or overeating for that matter it HAS to come from within the person themselves. about 6 months after my brother came to AZ to take me to a rehab I moved back to Jersey into my parents house months went by and ME myself and I made a call one Monday after being up for 3 or 4 days (from the coke)MIA my family called me cause I would be gone for days on end, I of course told them I was just staying with friends...partying...with whoever, wherever, whenever they did not know. They led busy lives too busy to see what was wrong with me and I felt very unloved and did not know how at this point to talk to anyone about it let alone my family...So I made a call and called a rehab, I was there for 49 days ( it was a 28 day program ) from there I agreed to go to a halfway housefor 3 months and have been clean and sober since 1989.
What I am trying to say, be a parent that is NON threatening to your children, be there friend, let them feel so close that they can come to you with anything, I did not have that.... maybe your niece didn't have that, and that with the peer pressure at school was just too much to handle.
So many people tell me Oh I am close to my kids , I am there friend...but they don't even know the kids favorite color,.... there dreams...... I think we have to be very intimate with our kids and we have to be honest with ourselves...do we really know our own child? I hope that your aunt and uncle are trying to work on what they could do to KNOW there own child and that they don't put to much blame on her after all SHE IS STILL ALIVE TO LOVE. It could have been much much worse.
I do believe that alcoholism is in ones genes, my father is one , my husband is a recovering as am I and my husbands father is a alcoholic..so if my kids want to drink...It will be very hard but I will tell them all I know and let them decide. Do I think drinking could lead to drug use ... it did for me so YES, does POT lead to harder drugs, it did for me so YES, so if my kids want to smoke pot ...well I will just have to cross that bridge when I get to it, for now my 14 year old really is against any kind of "crap" that people put into there bodies , he is very natural and a vegetarian so I hope that he never wants to try to" escape " from his life and try drugs And since I have all that experience from using drugs believe me I pass it all on to my kids.
I think for me that and the peer pressure from the kids at school ( you know it wasn't pressure from the kids it was me feeling like crap about myself that led me to "seek" out the drug users..they are there, I started at 12 with the drugs and today I here they are in the grammar schools...scary and so sad) well all of that is one of my main reasons for never putting my kids in a public school, I really didn't see much good in it , allot of bad not much good!
sorry this was so long I hate to write stuff out I would much rather have "talked" it out so I know you all understood what I have just wrote.
Have a great weekend all,
Heidi
----- Original Message -----
From: Pam Sorooshian
To: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 1:21 AM
Subject: Re: [UnschoolingDiscussion] Re: Seeking some encouragement...



On Apr 15, 2005, at 7:43 PM, b0b_5mith wrote:

> I suppose by not allowing it I meant to say I will judge it as
> unacceptable. It seems like
> some unschoolers are reluctant to make any sort of judgement statement
> at all. It's as if
> all behavior is considered fine as long as it's freely chosen by their
> child. I'm not sure I can
> agreee with that idea.

I think we're actually a pretty darn judgmental bunch, on the whole.
But we're perhaps more willing to let other people make their own
mistakes. Or, maybe that's not quite it either - I think it is that
we're more realistic about the fact that our kids WILL make their own
mistakes and our focus is not on preventing them from ever making
mistakes, but on keeping our relationship strong.

So many teens really have nothing much to do with their parents - they
don't communicate, the parents don't know their friends, the kids would
never confide in their parents, ask their advice, care about what they
think. Interestingly, by focusing on our relationship first, I think we
DO tend to have far more influence than those parents who rely on
control through reward and punishment, for example.

-pam



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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

In a message dated 4/16/2005 8:06:11 AM Mountain Daylight Time,
kleincrew@... writes:

I do believe that alcoholism is in ones genes, my father is one , my husband
is a recovering as am I and my husbands father is a alcoholic..so if my
kids want to drink...It will be very hard but I will tell them all I know and
let them decide


===========

My parents raised two cousins with us. Both their parents were bigtime
alcoholics, with violence and threats and neglect thrown in.

My parents were one alcoholic (mom) and one non.
Of my mom's parents, I think one was (her dad) and one not (her mom).
My dads, neither.

So I had one in four alcoholic grandparents.

My cousins had at least two and maybe three alcoholic grandparents. There
were five siblings. I think one escaped alcoholism. The girls who grew up
with us are both, sadly, drinking very much. Of their nine combined children,
I hear good stories of two of them, and alcohol and drug stories of the other
seven.

I drink very infrequently, and have no urge between times, nor ever go past
two drinks (usually one, and more usually none).
My sister was drinking but quit when her three children were young. She
abstains entirely, out of knowledge and fear. One of her kids been in trouble
with the law for alcohol and drugs. One is NOT using any thing (the eldest).
One, I'm not sure (and he might not be yet either; he's 19).

Of my three, unknown yet. But my husband's parents aren't alcoholics, so
mine might only have one alcoholic grandparent and maybe only one alcoholic
great grandparent. That's a pretty clean line, compared to my cousin's kids who
seem to have have four alcoholic grandparents (cousin's two parents and her
ex husband's two).

That's not a huge statistical sampling, but it's a snapshot family
comparison, and though they did have the trauma of the early childhood problems and of
growing up with relatives, we all grew up in the same household. So it
seems clearly nature and not nurture there.

Sandra


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

b0b_5mith

--- In [email protected], "The Klein Crew" <kleincrew@p...>
wrote:
>
> So many teens really have nothing much to do with their parents - they
> don't communicate, the parents don't know their friends, the kids would
> never confide in their parents, ask their advice, care about what they
> think. Interestingly, by focusing on our relationship first, I think we
> DO tend to have far more influence
````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
```````````````
>
```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
> Bob,
> I feel for you about your 15 year old niece...I do But. The above is so very very true, I do
not like to or ever want to put blame on any one for someone's drug use But there are
things in life that can help you make the decision to use or not use drugs and If a child
isn't close to there parents,siblings then that could really affect them to the point of not
really knowing who they are or if they are really cared for or loved.
> When I was young My parents owned a bar, so I grew up in bars and did my share of
sipping some wine , beer, whatever very early on, I thought I had a close relationship with
my parents but now as I look back NO I did not, they both worked, and they didn't know
my friends, never really knew where I was or who I was with. They didn't do that on
purpose, they did the best they knew how, they thought by my father holding down a full
time job in NYC and then coming back to Jersey at night and working at the bar with my
Mom was for the good of our family...Money was that way of thinking...anyway this is my
story please do not rip my head off about how I believe... For ME, I think the drinking lead
to OK now I want to try the High from POT, which led to OK now I want to try the High
from acid, then Coke which almost killed me, made me want to kill myself.... I moved out
of my folks home at age 18 so they really didn't know I was using drugs ...just drinking,
which if you own a bar and are with people that drink everyday that is normal...doesn't
every body drink daily...good day have a drink, BAD Day must drink...that's what I saw...
> when I was 23 I packed up all I owned and moved across country to AZ. I was trying to
"find" myself, I was running from myself but when I got to AZ who met me at the door but
me...the drugs and all the kind of people that went with that life. My family caught wind
of what I mess I was. My brother ( not my father mind you) flew out to AZ to take me back
to Jersey to put me away (rehab) well I was such a great manipulate that I talked my way
out of that, they threatened me that I could never see my nephews again and yadda yadda
yadda, none of that would have stopped me from using the drugs not even if they did haul
me off and lock me up, NO ONE could stop another person from , drinking, or drug use or
overeating for that matter it HAS to come from within the person themselves. about 6
months after my brother came to AZ to take me to a rehab I moved back to Jersey into my
parents house months went by and ME myself and I made a call one Monday after being up
for 3 or 4 days (from the coke)MIA my family called me cause I would be gone for days on
end, I of course told them I was just staying with friends...partying...with whoever,
wherever, whenever they did not know. They led busy lives too busy to see what was
wrong with me and I felt very unloved and did not know how at this point to talk to anyone
about it let alone my family...So I made a call and called a rehab, I was there for 49 days (
it was a 28 day program ) from there I agreed to go to a halfway housefor 3 months and
have been clean and sober since 1989.
> What I am trying to say, be a parent that is NON threatening to your children, be there
friend, let them feel so close that they can come to you with anything, I did not have
that.... maybe your niece didn't have that, and that with the peer pressure at school was
just too much to handle.
> So many people tell me Oh I am close to my kids , I am there friend...but they don't
even know the kids favorite color,.... there dreams...... I think we have to be very intimate
with our kids and we have to be honest with ourselves...do we really know our own child? I
hope that your aunt and uncle are trying to work on what they could do to KNOW there
own child and that they don't put to much blame on her after all SHE IS STILL ALIVE TO
LOVE. It could have been much much worse.
> I do believe that alcoholism is in ones genes, my father is one , my husband is a
recovering as am I and my husbands father is a alcoholic..so if my kids want to drink...It
will be very hard but I will tell them all I know and let them decide. Do I think drinking
could lead to drug use ... it did for me so YES, does POT lead to harder drugs, it did for me
so YES, so if my kids want to smoke pot ...well I will just have to cross that bridge when I
get to it, for now my 14 year old really is against any kind of "crap" that people put into
there bodies , he is very natural and a vegetarian so I hope that he never wants to try to"
escape " from his life and try drugs And since I have all that experience from using drugs
believe me I pass it all on to my kids.
> I think for me that and the peer pressure from the kids at school ( you know it wasn't
pressure from the kids it was me feeling like crap about myself that led me to "seek" out
the drug users..they are there, I started at 12 with the drugs and today I here they are in
the grammar schools...scary and so sad) well all of that is one of my main reasons for
never putting my kids in a public school, I really didn't see much good in it , allot of bad
not much good!
> sorry this was so long I hate to write stuff out I would much rather have "talked" it out
so I know you all understood what I have just wrote.
> Have a great weekend all,
> Heidi


Thanks so much Heidi for your reply. I'm glad you've gotten a handle on your addiction
and thanks for being so willing to share your past. My wife's parents owned a bar when
she was young as well and her experience, at least as a child and her opinions of drinking
are similar to yours. I've often said that I think another reasons that people are willing to
experiment with other drugs after pot is that they realize that pot is no big deal, at least
no where near as bad as they were lead to believe in the videos they were forced to sit
through in school. So then they wonder, if perhaps there's really no big deal with other
drugs as well. And unfortunately as you well know, that's the nature of other drugs. In the
beginning the drugs itself convinces you that it isn't a big deal.

I know what you mean when you say that the addict has to choose the help. If he/she isn't
ready they are very likely to return to the drug. In fact, even when they are ready they are
still somewhat likely to return to the drug. I'm glad you've stayed sober and done so well
for yourself with your wonderful family.

As for my cousin and her family, they are still giving her her freedom. My uncle told me
that she told him she was going to go visit some friends. He asked her if she thought she
was making a good decision, and she said yes. Later that night, she called home and said
she had decided to spend the night. Again he asked if she thought she was making a good
decision, and again she said yes. At about 2am she came in because some of her "friends"
had decided to get high, and she knew she shouldn't be there anymore. My uncle and I
cried together as he told me the story. As the saying goes, they are taking it one day at a
time.

Thanks for your thoughtful and personal reply,

Bob