Drug Or Alcohol Addiction in Your Family

If you are in love with an addict then you have some thinking to do. Most people who get involved with addicts spend far too much time following their heart. They think they are being understanding and compassionate towards the addict when in fact they are enabling the person.
If you are going to have any type of lasting relationship with the often emotionally unavailable addict you need to understand the concept of unconditional love. This means not having any expectations of the person who is sick with the disease of alcoholism. In fact, the more you humor an addict in the name of love, the more codependent you are with the addict or alcoholic.
Another word for unconditional love is 'tough love.' This is to avoid 'enabling' which only makes the alcoholic or drug addict you are in love with more destructive to you.
Enabling is a term used in Twelve Step recovery to describe the behavior of family members, or other loved ones, who rescue an alcoholic or drug addict from the consequences of their own self destructive behavior. If you are in love with someone you may feel that rescuing him or her is what must happen but that is not true.
No matter how devoted you are to someone, you should not rescuing anyone who is caught up in any of the compulsive or addictive self destructive behaviors that are symptoms of codependency. Besides doing drugs or drinking too much these behaviors include gambling, spending, eating disorders, sexual or relationship addictions; and the inability to hold a job.
A person who is acting out self destructively has no reason to change if they do not ever suffer major consequences for their behavior. If they are rescued from consequences, they are enabled to continue practicing their addiction.
This might be confusing because the term unconditional love implies that we love them no matter what we do. This is true but when we do love the addict it is supposed to be with a sense of loving detachment. This means that we let them make their own mistakes without meddling or interfering.
The theory behind codependency is that we react to the alcoholic to spare ourselves the pain of having to watch the alcoholic destroy him or herself. They are being selfish which is human and normal. The idea is to set oneself up as a victim and abuse or shame the loved one so that they feel shame. Unfortunately feeling more shame makes the addict want drink even more.
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Rescuing someone who is actively practicing addiction of some kind, is also a form of enabling. It is dysfunctional because it supports the person in continuing to practice their addiction. A person in recovery working on getting healthier may need some help from time to time – and that is great, that is being supportive in a positive manner. Helping someone to continue to self destruct is not support is codependency. It does not really qualify as love.

Parenting Tips
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Entertaining Your Kids Without Going Broke

Are you leaving all of the entertaining of your children to the television? I don't blame you. Watching television is so cheap!

Some recent studies show that now as many as 83 percent of kids are watching two hours of television or more each day, while an incredible 90 percent of toddlers spending that much time around the tube. That does not give them that much time to interact with people.

Activities with others and in the great outdoors allow for happier, less anxious kids that feel better and are more relaxed. A sedentary kid is going to be a fat and unhappy kid.

You do not have to spend a fortune to play with your kids or make them feel more active. All you have to do is make them simple forts out of boxes and blankets. Any big cardboard box can easily be turned into a castle or a fort. Cardboard boxes and tubes also make great rocket ships. You can make your little girl a kitchen complete with fridge and stove out of cardboard boxes.

It is not that hard to find large boxes. You can find them at stores that carry appliances.
One warning – if you are cutting cardboard, do it by yourself. Your child's safety scissors cannot handle thick, stiff cardboard.

There are also hundreds of fun crafts that your kids can make. You can find instructions for most of them online. You can have them build their own kite and fly it in the back yard. You can have them put together a popsicle stick house or have them build a boot scraper mat out of bottle caps. One of the most fun and simplest of toys is a phone connected by a string and made out of two empty tin cans.

Awakening your kid's creativity is as simple as giving them some paper and colored pencils. You can also let them decorate their own room using washable paints. They can draw all over the walls and you can wipe it clean later.

To get your kid off the couch and walking take a field trip to somewhere free. Go view the nearest public government buildings or take a walk in a part. Some kids enjoy strolls through cemeteries. Basically a kid will go anywhere with you. For them, the quality time has to do with the connection to you. So it does not really matter where you go as long as the two of you are together.

Parenting Tips
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