Check Your Child's Addiction

Question Time

Have you noticed any particular thing that your child is addicted to? Television, drink, food, telephone, music, biting nails or lips, etc. What pattern of addiction have you observed? Is it something that when taken away he/she reacts violently, calmly or is non-expressive? Or when given elicits some form of pleasure or satisfaction? What are the effects of this habit on the child's academic performance, health and social life?

Do you see any reason to worry based on the effect you observed such as poor performance at school, withdrawal, social anxiety or other negative effects? If this follows a particular destructive pattern, then you should be worried.

Case in point

When Ojo returned from boarding school and started requesting dark-coloured drinks, different from his initial preference for orange drinks, everyone thought it was normal for an 11-year-old child to switch drinks so they didn't bother about it. Everything was fine for a while until he turned 12 and they noticed that Ojo couldn't sleep at night without his dark drink and often exhibited violent outbursts anytime they tried to stop him from taking the drink. This led to more probes where it was discovered that Ojo had started taking hard drugs which he added to the drink to enable him to sleep. He was introduced to the use of hard drugs before the end of his first year in secondary school but his parents didn’t realise this when his drink preference initially changed they only noticed it recently because he was addicted and relied on it to sleep.

Any child in a similar situation like Ojo needs therapy to unlearn this behaviour.

As a parent, guardian or child caregiver, don't ignore any signs of addiction you observe and seek the help of a professional therapist immediately if:

i. You are not able to discern the child's behaviour anymore.

ii. You notice any violent pattern, sudden tantrums or other unexplainable

reactions. Note that it doesn’t always have to be verbal or violent, so look out for every sign.

iii. The child’s health or lifestyle is changing in ways you can’t explain.

iv. You are just concerned for your child knowing that his/her friends are having issues with addiction. Seeing a professional early will help prevent your child from being a victim.

Final Note

Now you know why you should not ignore any of your child's addictions. Never Ignore!