Pretend You're Good At Talking to Kids About Addiction

Guest writer, Katharine, shares about the ongoing conversations she has with her boys.

May 22, 2024

Hi, it’s me.

I’m excited to introduce you to my Substack friend, Katharine. We met last December at the Seattle meetup for Substack writers and connected over our shared history of church life and what I personally refer to as a complicated relationship with faith.

Katharine’s newsletter, Heretic Hereafter, is one of my weekly must-reads. I deeply connect with her stories, the questions she asks herself, and her personal writing style. If you love reading my weekly newsletters, I promise you’ll love hers as well. You should subscribe.

I’ll be back in your inbox next week with [Something! I’d better figure it out!]. Be sure to subscribe if you don’t want to miss it. Whatever it is 🤣.

Until next time,

Jen

Pretend You're Good At Talking to Kids About Addiction

By Katharine Strange

It was Friday afternoon, and I was feeling pretty proud of myself. The sun was shining; I had fed my two sons a healthy afterschool snack before shooing them outside to play. Then I set to work excavating the mess of papers in their backpacks. I was feeling like a damn good mom. And then I found a letter from my 2^nd grader to his grandparents.

On the wide-ruled lines he’d scrawled an earnest petition: “I haven’t seen you in a long time. Can you come back to Seattle?” It closed with an emphatic “I really want you to come back soon!!!” Three exclamation points like arrows in my heart.

It was my fault we hadn’t seen his grandparents since 2019.

What kind of mother kept children away from their grandma? This is a sacred bond; one I’d once looked forward to bestowing on my kids, picturing them supported by multiple generations of extended family.

But then there was the reality of my mom’s drinking. I couldn’t remember a time before her afternoon wine habit, but as a parent myself I saw it anew. Had things gotten worse or had I simply become more aware? To me, her drinking was a problem, to her, I was just being dramatic.

After much therapy, I tried setting a boundary: I didn’t want her drinking around us. She’d comply, for a few days, and I’d let myself feel hopeful. Then after she left, I’d find an empty wine bottle hidden under the sink. She was drunk on Christmas day and drunk on Easter morning. Between visits, she was drunk during our weekly Skype call. I felt myself increasingly on guard around her, unable to relax as I scrutinized her every movement. I didn’t want my kids to think that this was okay behavior, or that it was okay that she put her need for alcohol ahead of their need for a relationship with her. I knew from experience how much that hurt.

But could they even tell she was drunk? Was she holding it together “enough”? Was she okay to babysit, as she insisted she was? Would she unknowingly endanger them or herself?

The pandemic was, honestly, a welcome break.

Our enforced separation offered me space to think about what I needed instead of what she wanted. But it amped up her abandonment fears, and soon she was hectoring me with angry phone calls, and when I didn’t answer, ranting voice mails. Her escalation made my decision clear: she would never respect my boundaries.

With shaking hands, I wrote her a letter saying that I didn’t want to talk to her until she got sober and could recognize the harm her drinking had caused our relationship. I needed to see proof that she could change, that things could be better between us.

When I sent the letter, I wasn’t thinking that my ultimatum would snuff out her relationship with my kids. While I never forbade contact between them, without me to facilitate phone calls, cards, gifts, etc., their relationship fizzled. My son’s letter to her felt like a window into the unfairness of it all—he and his brother never got a vote in this situation. Had I been unduly harsh in going no-contact?

In trying to understand my family’s complicated dynamics, I’ve read dozens of books on addiction and mental illness.

But none seemed to cover this particular situation. The closest I came was finding Jess Leahy’s The Addiction Inoculation. It’s an evidence-based look at addiction prevention for parents. The biggest takeaway for me was that we must talk about addiction. It was a reminder that this disease thrives in secrecy and that information and openness were my best tools to help my kids avoid developing addiction themselves.

This echoed what I learned while working for an anti-racism education nonprofit. My mentors had taught me that:

kids notice everything, and
if I don’t talk with them about hard things, someone else will, and that someone else might not have their best interests at heart.

So I knew we had to talk about addiction and grandma’s absence, in an age-appropriate way. I also knew that it was going to be a process of “scaffolding”—giving them a little information at a time until they were mature enough to take on more. Having multiple conversations also takes the pressure off needing to choose the perfect words.

I had already stumbled through many explanations, beginning when they were preschool-aged, saying things like, “Grandma can’t visit because she’s sick.” As they got older, the conversation expanded to, “Grandma has a mental illness. That means her brain is sick. Her disease is called alcoholism.”

Of course, then came the harder questions.

When I bring up my son’s letter at dinner that night, the kids ask, “If she’s sick, why doesn’t she go to the doctor?” “Why doesn’t she take medicine?” and “Why can’t we visit her?”

I feel the pain behind these questions—it’s all so unfair. Part of me is angry, wanting to blame her. But I also know that addiction is, by definition, being powerless to stop. And so I fumble my way through answers. Yes, there are doctors, yes there is medicine, but sometimes they don’t work and sometimes Grandma’s brain makes her not want to get better.

As to visiting, I blurt out, “It’s not safe for us to spend time with her when she’s drinking. I mean, not that she would ever intentionally hurt you, but she might make a bad choice.” Then, worried that I’ve scared them, I add, “Grandma loves you. She would never hurt you.”

Can they hear the doubt in my voice?

I can feel their questions in the air, questions I, myself, would like answers to. I try to follow their lead and give them space to share their feelings. I wish, more than anything, that I could shield them from this pain.

As they age into adolescence, we’ll need to talk more about mitigating their own addiction risks. With our genetic history, they’ll need to either abstain or delay alcohol and drug use as late as possible.

I still second-guess my decision to go no-contact.

Some days it feels like I’ve torn my family apart. But I also know that my job as a mom is to protect my kids, and out of a buffet of shitty options, this feels like the least worst one. Someday my kids will be grown, they may decide I’ve made the wrong choice. I only hope that all this talking we’re doing now will lay a foundation for good communication moving forward.