Nobody begins life with the intent of becoming an addict and destroying themselves. Watch and listen as Greg teaches you how to be a wise parent and keep your kids away from the edge of the cliff.
Timestamps:
00:34 Metaphor of stagecoach driver.
01:32 No one begins life with the intent of becoming an addict.
02:54 Dating - statistics and establishing safe rules.
06:35 Phone use - statistics and establishing safe rules.
12:03 Effects of alcohol and legalized marijuana.
15:47 Establish rules to stay as far as possible from anything that could kill us emotionally or physically.
Transcript:
Getting Close to the Edge—A Metaphor and Real Life Cliffs
When we're told not to do something—or even if we have a suspicion that a given activity might not be good for us—we've all experienced the tendency to get as close to doing that thing as possible. We reason that we’re not breaking the “law” or instruction we were given, but we certainly approach that line closely.
The dangers of this attitude are illustrated by the following metaphor.
An employer was interviewing men for the position of stagecoach driver. He asked the first man, "The trail will take you over some mountains where there are some steep cliffs. As you go over the mountain, how close could you get to the edge without going over?"
The first man responded, "I could place that tire so close to the edge that half the wheel was over the edge."
The employer brought in the second man and asked the same question. The man replied, "I am the best driver you ever did see. I can tilt a coach up on two wheels and hang the other half off the edge of the mountain."
When asked the same question, the third driver responded, "Close to a cliff? I'd stay as far away from that edge as I could get!" He got the job.
Nobody begins life with the intent of becoming an addict and destroying themselves. Disastrous patterns begin with one drink, one angry word, one video game, one picture of a scantily clad man or woman, one exciting experience with a phone.
Any seduction begins with one experience, and while it is TRUE that ONE drink or video game may do no harm—as many kids and adults quickly point out—all addictions begin with one behavior that diminishes our emotional pain.
SO what does this mean for us as parents? I could give you examples all day long—without breaking for lunch—but we’ll discuss just a few:
Getting Close to the Edge with Dating
First, let’s talk about dating. Kids spend time alone with potential sexual partners earlier and earlier. (I used to say boys and girls spend time alone, but now there is a growing incidence of boys with boys, girls with girls, transgender relationships that can’t even be defined with words we all know).
And yet, studies have proven beyond all doubt that kids who date earlier than 16 are far more likely to experience many of the following:
- Early and unsafe sex
- Pregnancy
- Sexually-transmitted diseases
- Dysfunctional relationships not just while young, but for rest of their lives
- Early marriage and a greater incidence of divorce
- Poor academic performance
- Substance abuse
- Strain in relationships with their parents
- Dating violence
- Self-harm, like cutting
- Depression
- Avoidance of serious relationships as an adult
- Negative body image
- A pattern of being dependent and clingy
- Limited careers and income
I’m not making this stuff up. These consequences are pretty severe—even life deadening—and yet parents routinely smile and shrug off any mention of their children dating—by which I mean spending time alone with potential sexual partners—dating at age 10, 11, 12.
Some parents ENCOURAGE their children to dress in sexually attractive ways to attract potential partners.
Based on the data they’ve gathered, many experts advocate that kids don’t date until they’re age 18—not kidding—although they realize that nobody would listen to such a recommendation. It would be far too old-fashioned and alarmist.
I can’t tell you when to allow your child to date. I CAN tell you that the outcome statistics are terrible for kids who date before age 16. The real question is, how close to the edge of the cliff do you want your children to get? We know there’s a cliff.
Statistics over many years don’t lie. Allowing children to date young is like providing them cocaine at home, and then just sitting back to see if they can handle it. Maybe they’ll be all right.
No, no parent would do that. Or dating early would be like handing explosives to a child to play with, but without any training. Do you really want to do that? Do you really want to drive that close to the cliff?
That’s just dating.
Getting Close to the Edge with Phones
Now, another issue. Let’s talk about kids and their use of phones. By “phones” I mean any electronic device, and innumerable studies now indicate that kids who use phones for texting, social media, video games, and much more have a greatly increased risk of the following:
- They can’t be separated from their phone. They act like they’ll die without them, and they ignore their homework, chores, and other responsibilities. It’s called an addiction.
- They use their phones during meals and other family activities. Their interaction with the family diminishes nearly to nothing.
- They get annoyed and even disrespectful if you require them to put their phone away—for the purpose of looking at you as you talk, or to do their homework, or whatever.
- If their phone use is restricted, they sneak extra time.
- They go to bed with their phone, often staying up quite late. You’re even sure how late, because you don’t always check. 1 of 3 sleep with phone touching them.
- They often use their phone in a place where they can be alone.
- The first thing they do in the morning is to check their phone—despite not doing their homework, being late for school, and so on.
- You often have to repeat yourself to him or her, because the first time you spoke, they were completely immersed in their phone.
- They regularly get upset about some communications they read on social media. Or they brag about others communications, like how many followers, or likes, they have.
- If their phone use is interrupted by other activities, or by lack of Internet reception, they become irritable—just like someone withdrawing from a substance. Again, this called addiction.
- They’re not participating much in the real world outside school and home—like sports and other outdoor activities.
- You get more “attitude” from them than you used to.
- When you interrupt their phone use, they often say things like, “Just five more minutes,” or “Oh, come on.”
- They consistently put off homework and other duties to be on their phone.
- Their schoolwork suffers.
- They’re more distant than they used to be.
- Now studies show that phones lead to altered brain function, altered brain structure. Brain damage, poor school performance, increased detachment from peers and from life, increased disrespect toward parents, more entitlement, and much more.
When MY children were young, there were no cell phones. If I were raising children today—considering my experience with parents who have kids with phones, and considering the abundance of studies now available—there would be NO phones in our home with any capacity to surf the web, access porn, text their friends, or anything else but call their parents, siblings, grandparents, and perhaps a few others. Period.
They’d have flip phones that can call and text only specific numbers. Cheap Wal-Mart phones. Why? Because cell phones are all bad? No, but phones need to be severely restricted simply because kids are not prepared to be inundated by all the distractions and deceptions being sold EVERYWHERE on phones and other electronic devices.
Again, how close to the edge of the cliff do you want them driving their stagecoach? A child having a phone is simply not worth the enormous risks that come with it.
Children will protest that EVERYONE has a phone. Yes, right, and everyone has access to alcohol, and drugs, and porn, and on and on, and how is that going?
Getting Close to the Edge with Marijuana and Drinking
For an example of what I’m talking about, let’s look at our present process of legalizing recreational marijuana everywhere—because, after all, they say, it’s not worse than alcohol, and look at those wonderful effects.
The cost of excessive alcohol use in the United States has reached $300 billion per year. That’s about half the entire U.S. Defense Department budget. It includes losses in workplace productivity, health care for alcohol-related diseases, law enforcement, and losses from motor vehicle crashes related to excessive alcohol use.
The researchers believe that the studies UNDER estimate the cost of excessive drinking because information on alcohol is often underreported or unavailable, and the study did not include other costs, such as pain and suffering due to alcohol-related injuries and diseases.
Marijuana is proving to be headed toward the same or similar effects on our lives, and we just sit back and watch, driving close to the cliff. Marijuana can cause panic attacks, paranoia, psychosis, delusions, hallucinations, depression, anxiety.
For chronic users, the impact on memory and learning can last for days or weeks after its acute effects wear off (major health organizations). NIDA research shows that drivers using marijuana have slower reaction times, impaired judgment, and problems responding to signals and sounds. Add that up: accidents, and deaths.
Long-term abuse of marijuana may lead to dependence in some people. Major experts are now saying that "it is an erroneous belief widely held by the general public, and among many physicians, that marijuana is not addicting." Many people experience all the terrible effects of drug withdrawal.
But we legalized it, including for our children, to see how close to the cliff we could drive. Where is our common sense?
Stay Away from the Edge of the Cliff
Back to phones. They don’t LOOK dangerous from the outside, not in the first five minutes. But the first five minutes of drinking doesn’t look dangerous either.
We all want to stay as far as possible from anything that's dangerous. That would mean that wise parents would impose severe restrictions of phone use, zero tolerance for anger, whining, and the other behaviors we have talked about in the Parenting Training.
I am NOT an alarmist. I am realistically describing what happens when we do nothing as our children engage in risky behaviors, where we can’t see the harm immediately, but which have been proven to hurt children long-term.
Let’s get smarter and stay away from the edge of the cliff. What do you think?
