We had the 'Intervention Specialist' from Martin High School come to talk at our PTA meeting today. What an eye-opening experience for us parents of really young ones. There are women at the PTA meeting that have high schoolers, so maybe this was not as shocking to them as it was to us. Yikes.
This 'specialist' started off with some statistics. Some statistics from our district! I never really knew how prevalent, common, etc. that drug/alcohol usage has become amongst high school age kids. Quite scary. She showed us drug paraphernalia and how it is used by the kids. And at what grade they start certain behaviors. I would not have ever guessed that 4th, 5th and 6th graders would even have access to some of this stuff, much less be experimenting with it.
The interesting thing about her talk was the role-playing that she does with the 6th graders. It is no longer training the kids to 'say no to drugs', because really, it is not a stranger coming up to them saying, 'try this or you are a big baby'. It is more like the child goes to a party with 3 friends. They all 3 go join in a group smoking ~whatever~, and leave the one child standing there alone. That child has to make a decision to stand up for what they believe in and walk away or feel the pressure, succumb to it, and join in because they just want to be part of the group and not stand out as different. The pressure that they feel is from within, but it is real. It has a lot to do with self-confidence and self-esteem and having the ability to make a good, strong decision on their own.
I walked out of there quite shaken up, but knowing that I need to start building the foundation for good decisions NOW. Also, keeping the communication lines open and alive between us and our kids, so they can bring their issues to us.
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