I can hear the collective Gen X howl of protest echoing off all the Subarus at the Trader Joe’s parking lot. Maybe YOU believe that honesty is the best policy, but maybe YOU didn’t spend your 20’s fucking bands like it was your job. No need for YOU to come clean about the dangers of contracting anal herpes from uncircumcised European guitarists which incidentally (fun fact!) can be transmitted even with the use of a condom.
Raising children is an intricately constructed, highly delicate web of secrets and lies. In order to raise productive members of society, we must subscribe to the “liar, liar, pants on fire” method of parenting.
Would honesty have stopped my kid from excavating Peter Dinklage-sized boogers out of his nose? NO. What worked was telling him that if he continued to mine his nasal passages for soft jade, his skull would collapse.
Let’s make a pact, here and now, to keep our big, fat cake holes shut about how much cocaine we shoveled in our faces back in the day, okay? My 8th grader already knows more about drugs than most street dealers. The middle school curriculum educates our kids so thoroughly on drug lingo, they can score in any neighborhood in America and several in Tijuana and not get ripped off.
All he needs is my credit card number in his sweaty little hands, and bingo! He’s able to purchase the Meth Lab Starter Kit off Amazon Prime. He doesn’t need even a tiny shred of encouragement from me that drugs are anything but BAD.
Are you really naïve enough to think that if you have a heart to heart with your kids about how you many opportunities you threw away because you spent the 90’s zooted, they’ll hear it as cautionary tale? That’s not how this works.
Kids have the highly selective hearing of a Jack Russell terrier. I’m not going to tell my kid about the time I heard the phone ringing through a haze of homegrown Thai stick and jumped up to answer my bong, breaking my foot. He’ll completely tune out the part where I spent half my freshman year of college on crutches. All he’ll hear is hear “MOM TOTALLY HAD A BONG.”
Your kids will use your past drug use as an example of how it’s possible to survive stupid behavior. Need I remind you how different things are today? When we went to college, we didn’t have to sell a kidney to pay tuition. It was perfectly FINE to eat shrooms until we broke the time/space continuum. But I’m not going to spend my golden years eating cat food because my kid racked up half a million dollars in loans reenacting Pineapple Express.
And you, Mr. “I’d rather teach my children how to properly use and respect mind-altering substances,” you need to CALM THE FUCK DOWN. It’s bad enough that parents want to disclose past drug use, but wanting to partake of them with your children truly signals the decline of western civilization.
Who told you that you could schlep your kid to Burning Man? Surely the child would rather go to Disneyworld, or soccer camp, or just lie in a crib and drool that attend this debauched, drug-addled shit show. I don’t care how ‘mature’ Perseus is for his age, or that he’s on a beautiful spirit journey, 7 years old is too young to smoke DMT. Do you really need to tote your offspring to the Black Rock desert so they can witness you getting so high on molly you shit yourself?
Statistics I probably made up show that kids who do drugs with their own parents are more likely to become addicts. So, marinate in that a little before you pull out a pookie and torch that shit with your middle schooler.
I get that you need a little ganja, a toot of blow, maybe a smidge of heroin to take the edge off. But the only reason you think it’s a good idea to do drugs with your kids is because YOU’RE HIGH.
I can have an honest relationship with my son without full disclosure of every sordid detail of my drug history. In fact, I highly recommend using scare tactics to frighten your kids into sobriety. It worked for a lot of teens in the late 80’s, when one of the most iconic PSA campaigns of all time likened our brains on drugs to a fried egg sizzling in a pan.
Of course, no one has ever understood why the egg wasn’t scrambled, which is a lot MORE like your brain on drugs, or who the man in the commercial was supposed to represent, and why use an EGG, which is in fact one of the most perfectly nutritious foods in existence, and why make that sizzling egg look so damn good, perfect if you have the munchies and add a side of toast and bacon to those brains, but the point is DRUGS ARE BAD. BAD.
Also, breakfast is delicious.
Any questions?
Are you one of those honest parents, ruining it for the rest of us???
Talk to me. I’m listening.
Come hang out with me on Facebook and Instagram so I can have friends without leaving the house.
A Buick in the Land of Lexus 
I’m awfully glad, reading this, that my step-son is all grown up (pushing 50) and I don’t have to face this issue. And, if I did, my best cautionary tales would be of other people and their drugs. I have plenty of those.
Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
Samara writes in favor of a measure of secrecy.
I am going to read your post, but the title got me so excited. YES!! I agree lying to children and teens about your experimenting with drugs and/or use of them is imho essential. When they’re grown healthy adults, maybe it can be discussed with a little more openness. But my big thing is if you’re open while their brains are still developing they could get the notion, well my mom/dad lived to tell their tales so what’s the harm if I do a little blow or smoke a pain pill? Okay I am going to go read now.
Well said! Thank you for your honesty and sound advice.
My favorite is…well, I want to be honest and I can’t really fault them for smoking weed because I did and I don’t want to be a hypocrite.
Fucking really? Because I did some shit before I ever even thought of having a kid, then they get a pass for doing the same things? I don’t think so. What if I had killed someone? Oh..well, they get to kill one person because I don’t want to be a hypocrite.
Also, all humans are hypocritical from time to time. We can’t help it. We’re simple creatures.
I actually hate when people think hypocrisy is the worst thing on earth. Kids really doesn’t need to know about your cocaine addiction. Plus, your honesty may make him think of you as a loser. A lot of kids think drugs are for losers.
Don’t be a loser, be a hypocrite instead.
My story would be a bit different. I mean, I didn’t spend the WHOLE 90’s zooted. lol And I was quite a functional pothead in early adulthood. I knew enough about myself (and my mental condition) not to mess with anything too hard, and after my first bad experience, I avoided hallucinogenics, feeling like people without a firm grip on reality should not mess with it. lol I am not yet sure how I would handle my kid on the topic. Will prob be a mixed approach of “skull collapses” and tempered honesty.
The truth is (see what I did there) that some things are simply better left unsaid. Biggest problem I see is parents trying to be friends with their kids and not parents. That’s where all the rest starts.
And seriously – the egg should have been scrambled. Poor marketing strategy there. 😀
So true. I couldn’t agree more. Dammit! The kids need a parent, someone to guide them and rely on not a “friend”.
Let’s be honest. D.A.R.E. didn’t do shit to stop us from using drugs.
Part of what I see happening is parents who experienced the (ridiculously unsuccessful) DARE program and other scare tactics based on blatant falsehoods (“Smoke just one marijuana and you’ll die. Or become addicted to heroin, which is even worse.) think, with their mature adult brains, how much they wish they’d had real information. So they want to give their kids the benefit of their experience, not realizing that drug education for children has come a long fucking way and their children do not have a mature adult brain with which to process the information they’re trying to offer.
The other thing is adults who are either finally becoming friends with their parents or seeing that happening for their friends and wishing they could have that with their parents. These people stupidly decide to skip the normal stage of raising a child where the child must hate you. At least a little bit. If you’re not an oppositional force, you’re not raising the kid, you’re just witnessing his process of raising himself; you might as well keep a camera rolling and make it a documentary.
I don’t have kids yet, I’ve always wondered if it does more harm than good to share every single last thing. Maybe it depends on the kid, the situation/timing, maturity levels, etc, but what a tough decision to have to make.
We lie to our kids all the time. Santa Claus? Elf on the shelf? Fairy tales? Bobby the hamster went to live on the farm? Mommy and daddy love both of you equally? All lies, pretty much. At least some of those lies serve a purpose, and drugs could be one of those topics where it could be necessary. On the other hand, it doesn’t even have to be necessary to lie about drugs – maybe a visit to a drug rehab could give LD a pretty good idea of what the outcome could be. Just because you came out well doesn’t mean it’s the rule – just like dropping out of college worked out ok for Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, but maybe not so much for a few millions of other college dropouts.
P.S. I may have to lie about the subject myself – my personal experience was limited to a couple of incidents with no discernible high each time.
My step daughter is a pot head behind our backs and I fucking hate it, to be honest she can’t afford to lose any brain cells. I “came clean” and told her that I smoked a few times in high school and didn’t like it, that it just made me sleepy. That part was correct. I left out the ten years where I was spending $300 a week on coke or that the only time I ever smoked crack her mom gave it to me
I totally lied (and my experimentation was pretty tame although his dad’s wasn’t). And for similar reasons to those you give here. But my son wound up in rehab because of alcohol abuse (it was bad). My point is that substance abuse can occur, no matter what you do or don’t do as a parent.
I don’t know anyone who parents like that so I can’t really comment. Of course, I truly have never tried any sort of drug. The worst thing I’ve done is drink…excessively. I can’t really lie to my kids about it either, because they saw me do it. So all I can do is tell them, if they ask, that it was a horrible (repeated) choice which made my problems worse in the end. If I had the option to lie, I probably would.
I am in complete agreement. We aren’t here to be our kids’ best friend, we’re here to teach them the WAY to become smart, healthy, successful adults. My example was my mom and stepdad, who smoked weed on the regular (but certainly not before work or every day) and guess what – I grew up never wanting to touch the stuff. Ditto alcohol – at least until I was in college – b/c they allowed me a glass of wine with holiday dinners. It wasn’t taboo. My dad has always been pretty straight. My son knows that certain members of the extended family smoke weed. Schools have definitely drilled home the point about all drugs – including alcohol (which pissed me off because my kids were constantly pointing out that I was “doing drugs” every time I cracked open a bottle of wine), and my almost-17yo still believes this stuff will destroy his football career. I have friends who’ve lost kids to drugs, and it’s a hell I would sell my own soul to avoid.
I actually needed my kid to get me pot when I was sick from chemo and visiting her at college, so lying at this point really wouldn’t work so well. And then I won’t be able to lie to the younger one because when he tells his sister that I told him pot will make a second nose pop up on his face she’ll be able to tell him about the night she scored for me.
There are exceptions of course, and that is one.
Thank you for stopping by to read and comment. How are you feeling?
All is well now. It was kind of hilarious I needed her to do that after telling her to stay away from drugs her entire lifetime. Hahaha!
Great post! It’s honest and funny. I’m with you. My son is 10 years old, 11 in january, and he does not need to know that I spent 9 years in prison, not right now at least, maybe one day, just not today.
Keep up the good posting.
God bless.
See that woman there, I asked my little granddaughters? (5 and 7) she was smoking a cigarette. Her hair stinks, I said, her skin and her clothes stink and she has bad breath, that was the beginning. I kept it up as the years went by. I stopped smoking, I told them. It was a twenty year overnight success. And I’ve done irreparable damage to my lungs. Neither girl smokes. Their parents take an interest in who their friends are. I know that cigarettes isn’t in your league, but the end result and damage is the same. You have to find a way, now, while you still have some influence. Good luck.
I don’t recommend it, but yes I’m honest about my 20s pot use, mostly as a cautionary tale for I was suicidal at 18 and ended up bipolar. Brain altering drugs are taken under medical, psychiatric and neurologic supervision in this household. I take their effects quite seriously. Unfortunately, I don’t write with the wit or bludgeoning power of your pen.
Happy birthday, Samara.
Your candor is refreshing!
Parenting – the hardest and most important job many of us will ever have, and for which most of the training is limited to “on-the-job.” Goody two shoes that I was, all the way through college and beyond, there really was not much that I’d have had to hide from my two daughters re my own “bad” behaviors. And there are really so many other factors in play when it comes to the subject of drugs, addictions of any kind, and/or the mistakes we made in our youths, and sometimes even later in life.
Adding my own two cents to the conversation, and being now the parent of two young adults, you also have to keep in mind that each child is different, even multiples that come from the same gene pool, sometimes even with the same delivery date, in how and what they learn and remember. In the end, then, while they were still under my legal jurisdiction and sometimes even now, my philosophy in these “dicey” situations was to give them enough rope to hang themselves e.g. to make their own mistakes while standing by closely enough to sever said rope before it completely strangled them, cut off the oxygen supply to their still developing brains and thus enabled them to learn whatever lesson came as a result.