Will my child become an alcoholic?

Of all the possible horrors a parent can face during child raising years, losing a child to addiction or alcoholism simply has to rank near the top of anyone’s list. Can I get this child to adulthood without addictions? What is the secret? In today’s world, the challenges we face are ferocious.

In seeking suggestions during challenging times, it can often be helpful to draw from the successful examples of others in life. In doing so, a story can be encouraging:

Once upon a time both father and son lived in a typical middle class house in a middle class neighborhood experiencing middle class lives. The father was usually very busy with middle class work and caring for the middle class home. The twelve year old son busied himself as best he could.

One bright spring day the father paused from his labors and peered out toward the neighborhood. The father noticed his son sitting on a curb in the crowded neighborhood near a busy neighborhood intersection. The son looked bored but soon other neighborhood children began to gather around the son sitting on the roadside curb.

Suddenly the father was filled with horror as his mind saw his son’s future filled with dreadful misbehavior. The father thought “I’m loosing my son”.

The father gathered his son and the two drove to a motorcycle retail store and the pair went inside. Neither father nor son had ever ridden a motorcycle before but soon they both owned an off-road dirt bike.

Neither father nor son had any prior skill of dirt biking but both entered into the hobby with enthusiasm. The pair learned to ride motorcycles through trails in the woods together watching each other make mistakes. The two became a father and son dirt biking team and over the following years created many adventures and memories together. The day finally arrived the son was more interested in girls than his father or motorcycles and the duo faded.

As the years passed, the father saw his son graduate from high school, pursue further education, marry, begin a career as a civil employee in a federal job, purchase and upgrade three houses and become the proud father of three children himself.

The father learned the greatest gift to our children was not “things” but our TIME is what matters most.