Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Raising Children

A mother writes and wonders what's wrong with our program. Her son came to us with great intentions. He wanted to change his life. To get sober. To get back in the work force.

Instead, our manager - a man she said was "very rude," woke her son up at 4:00 a.m. and put him in a van with other clients to go to a work site. She said he didn't even have time to eat breakfast.

I didn't bother to answer back and welcome her to the real world. A world where men and women all over the country get up early so they can feed their families and pay their bills. If she had to write the kind of email she did, she wouldn't have understood what I meant.

One of the biggest problems we run into with addicts and alcoholics is helping them to unlearn bad habits taught them by their parents. Like a sense of entitlement. That someone else is supposed to care for them.  That everything they do is okay.

After all, mommy and daddy aren't going to be around forever to pick them up when they fall down.