IMPACT OF PARENTAL DRUG ABUSE ON CHILDREN

Impact of Parental Drug Abuse on Children

Impact of Parental Drug Abuse on Children

Introduction

Parental drug abuse can have serious consequences for children. Children whose parents abuse drugs were implicated in various behavioral problems, social problems, emotional / mental problems, developmental issues, etc. Such children are prone to get affected by such problems as depression, poor performance, inappropriate social behavior, crime, etc. It was also found that children addicted parents are more likely to use drugs or alcohol in their later life. Parents who abuse drugs affect children in some areas. Parental drug use can be devastating for the family and relationships that exist within the block. Every child solves this situation differently, but it is common for the development of the child behavior problems. As the child grows up, its behavioral problems may lead to addiction, academic deficiencies, educational disabilities, behavioral disorders, delinquency and violence.

The prevailing explanatory model of children's successful transition from preschool to elementary school assumes that major risk and protective factors lie primarily within the child in terms of cognitive and emotional “readiness” to enter kindergarten. Consistent with this assumption, most intervention efforts involve school-based attempts to improve children's cognitive and self-regulation skills. Investigations of the social contexts and relationships that affect children's transition to school have only begun to emerge. Surprisingly, despite the general acknowledgment that parent-child relationships constitute central contexts for children's development, there has been little attention to the roles parents play in children's transition to elementary school, and almost none to planning or evaluating interventions addressed to parents of preschoolers. We attempt to address these gaps.

Subject

In most studies of children's development, “parent” means mother, and parenting is studied in isolation from other family and social contexts in which parent-child relationships develop. We present a multidomain model of children's development that locates mother-child and father-child relationships within a system of relationships inside and outside the family, paying special attention to the quality of the relationship between the parents. We then describe the results of preventive interventions based on our conceptual model in the form of a couples group led by trained mental health professionals.

Problem Statement

Challenges for the young pre-schooler about to enter kindergarten have been well documented.3,4,5 What makes this an especially important developmental transition period is the consistent evidence for a “trajectory hypothesis” in both middle-class and low-income samples: how children fare academically and socially in early elementary school is a strong predictor of their academic, social, and mental health outcomes throughout high school. These findings imply that interventions to improve the child's relative standing at school entrance could have long-term payoff.

Research context and research gaps

Research claiming to demonstrate the importance of parent-child relationships in children's school adaptation has a number of important gaps. We lack longitudinal studies that trace family trajectories across the school transition. Information about fathers' potential role in their children's transition is extremely sparse. Only a handful of studies examine other aspects of the family system context ...