To Parents: talking with your kids...

Definitely. The earlier you start, the better. They may not always understand right away, but it can make a difference nonetheless.

As with Brandon, he didn't understand why he wasn't supposed to take drugs or even what they were... but he knew that you told him no and that was enough for him for the time being.

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." -Huxley

"It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err." -Gandhi

I think the problem is people expect drug abuse to be a deliberate attempt to get high, take a risk, or "be cool" when it's not always. If you're near a busy road with a child you don't wait until the child runs out into traffic or is old enough to walk there by themself to tell them to watch for cars and look both way before crossing the street, so why should we treat drug, alchol, and sex education any differently? I don't think a six year should have access to drugs like that, but they should know that drugs can be dangerous if you don't need them. And you are definately right about kids seeing adults taking drugs all the time. Even if you try to be discrete, if there are kids around they will see you (I had to take some medicine for a headache the other day while working at preschool, and even though I waited until nap time and tried to be discrete I still had at least three kids watching me).
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"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." - Marianne Williamson

Wow I never thought that a 6 yr old would OD. I have a seven yr old brother and I'm already concerned about him. It's freaky, I'm only 20 and I didn't have that kind of talk til I was like 9 or 10 (almost in middle school).

"Because you weren't there Nanny, you said if anyone gives me anything I have to let you see it before I can eat it. I would have just brought it home to you., like my Halloween candy."

He sounds like such a sweetie, sucks that you have to teach them about all the bad things in the world earlier then you'd like, you try to protect them but you you can't always be there right? Oh my gosh, I sound like a mom,lol.
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As a parent of two teens I have been through hundreds, if not thousands of talks with them. Starting with "you have to stay right beside me and hold my hand because cars are much bigger than you and can hurt you if the drivers aren't paying attention or don't see you" to "look both ways before crossing the street" to "your body is yours. If anyone tries to touch you in any way that you don't like Yell, and let me or your dad or your grandparents or a teacher..." to "explaining what parts of the body are" to "what is and isn't okay for someone else to touch" to "what drugs are and what happens when you take them, and what alcohol is and why people shoudln't drive and drink" to "why people make such a big deal out of someone's skin color" to "safe sex" or "masturbation" to "date rape drugs and being safe--not putting yourself in situations where bad things are more likely to happen and how to keep safe" to "homosexuality and why people are so afraid of differences" to "a kid who got killed playing russian roulet with friends" to "derogatory name calling such as
'spic' 'wetback' 'cracker' 'nigger' 'faggot' and many others"

There is no easy way to sit down and talk to a child about serious subjects, the horrors of the real world, etc. But I've found that children are usually much smarter than adults give them credit for. Be honest. Be age appropriate. Sometimes it only takes a general explanation, and then later when they are a little older a more specific one.
But kids learn through other kids, teachers, television, books, parents, other family members, etc--make sure that you keep an open door policy about anything and everything that they want to talk about. As they develop they explore their independence and might become embarrassed about certain subjects, but those are many times the subjects they need the most information about, that they have the most questions about but are too afraid to ask.
It's never too soon to talk about the important issues of life, the scary ones, the confusing ones, the embarrassing ones--forewarned is forearmed. The more knowledge you give a child from which to base his/her own knowledge and opinion on the better able he/she will be able to defend himself in the real world. ANd the real world is hitting kids earlier and earlier these days.

"A prime part of the history of our Constitution...is the story of the extension of constitutional rights and protections to people once ignored or excluded." ~US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

I know I haven't had the chance to talk about these things with my kid yet but I'm just thinking about my parents and the things they did that were good and not so good. First off, meburgos is dead on with the open door policy. You can't help fix what you don't know is broken and if your kids don't feel comfortable coming to you than chances are it will be harder and harder to know what they're going through as they get older. Kids get really good at being secretive. The biggest thing their is to be supportive when they come to you with major issues. My parents gave me an excellent example of this. Sure, they would get upset and yell when my room wasn't clean and stuff like that but whenever I came to them with problems like getting a speeding ticket or when I came to them about having a baby it was all about support. It's ok, it's not going to be easy but everyone makes mistakes and we're always here for you, you're still a good person. That kind of attidtude makes it much much easier for me to go to them when I really need help, and trust me that's saying something because usually I try to do everything myself.

Talking is always a good thing but I would be careful not to tell them too much without being too vague. Curiousity is a powerful adversary, at least it was for me. If all they know is it's wrong than they'll get curious. Although at certain points I think it's better that all they know is wrong because at those points it's "I listen to you because you said so" which is where your nephew was at with the halloween candy. I think it's good that that's something he said, maybe he doesn't have anything better than halloween candy to compare drugs to, but he knows to say no and he's innocent about it. As long as he's staying that way and not questioning it I think that's a good thing. The problem is that you have to keep an eye on that to make sure that they're questioning things with you and you get to explain it before they question it with the wrong people. I guess know where they're getting their information from, who they ask about stuff like that. That's where I think the open door policy helps because they not only feel comfortable talking to you but you're the one they just naturally aim their questions at.

Finally, personal experience. I think personal experience is a powerful weapon. It's something that provides reason. This is no longer just some rule that doesn't seem to make sense and would be worth looking into to satisfy curiosity. Now it's something that has very real and tangible consequences. Ust the things that you've been through or the experiences people you know have had. Take the girl that OD'd for example. It won't make her look bad to say that drugs are very harmful and if you eat them they can kill you. It's a very real example "Susie isn't here because she ate the drugs that were bad" not because susie didn't listen to her parents and not because susie made a mistake. If you avoid those words/phrases than I think you avoid the things you're worried about. Susie ate the bad drugs and the result was she got sick and died. That's straight to the point and says that drugs are bad and this is what they can do. The thing about personal experience though is that it gives a connection. Of course you have to be careful that things don't get thrown in your face, but if you talk about it right and use the action/consequence idea, there's less chance of that happening and more chance of the kids realizing you don't want them to do things because you know what happens. This is something I wish my parents had done more of. I really didn't know much about my parents growing up because they kept their past pretty well secret. Once I started making mistakes my parents told me stuff they had been through and it made it so much easier to go to them for advice on how to change things and the right thing to do. I only wish I had known more earlier. This is something like advice I read in a parenting magazing. When I was growing up my parents always hid money things from me. I wasn't allowed to know how much things cost or how much we paid for dinner. They didn't think it was appropriate for us to know their financial status, and in many ways it wasn't. But I read in the magazine about how parents should make transactions in cash instead of using cards all the time so that kids could see it and understand the value of money and how it all works. I think if we hide our experiences than it forces them to go learn about all this on their own and (take it from me who's done it already) they always end up learning the hard way. That's why talking is important but being REAL is extremely important.

Kids learn from our examples.

And now these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13

This is just plain awful. I mean, now even 6 year olds are getting into drugs?! There is obviously a big problem here, and all the talks, lectures, pamphlets, and health fairs I myself have experienced seem to do little to curtail the problem.

It's great that you talked to your godson when you did. If all he had to compare drugs to was candy, then who knows? He might have eventually assumed it was okay to have. I don't mean to say there is anything wrong with him, but kids just seem too uninformed for their own good. When they find out the consequences it seems too late.

My little sister ODed when she was... 3, I think. Maybe 2. I can't remember. My grandparents had given me one of their pill boxes that had slots for Sunday through Saturday, and I thought it was so cool that I put Tylenol in each. Well, apparently I left it low enough for my little sister to reach it, and she ate all the pills that were in there, which was probably 14, or so.

Children are curious, that's the most dangerous part of all this. Babies explore with their mouths, which can get them into trouble if they put something in their mouth that they shouldn't. That's what happened with my sister.

I think it's important to explain things to children, but sometimes that's difficult because they might not understand, and their curiosity will get the better of them. But it's still worth it to try, and try again, and again and again...

It's also important to note that 'drugs' can mean anything from crack cocaine to tylenol to cough medicine. ODing on drugs doesn't necessarily mean that the kid got hard drugs off the street. She may have found a bottle of mommy or daddy's pills and brought them to school with her, then had too many of them for her own good.

Good luck with Brandon.

~C
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