Bob Curley’s News Feature on Join Together’s website summarizes the recent conference on “How to Raise a Drug-Free Kid: The Straight Dope.” It is filled with great information and suggestions. I’ve included a few of the highlights below:

• Opening comments of Dr. Nora Volkow’s (she is the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and a phenomenal leader in the addiction research effort — check out www.hbo.com/addiction to see what I am talking about):  “…the brains of children and adolescents are still forming, and  their ‘developmental trajectory’ can be greatly influenced by external stimuli — especially that provided by parents.”
• Conference speaker Cynthia Kuhn, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology and cancer biology at the Duke University Medical Center and co-author of a pair of books on youth and drugs: “Kids are making choices using criteria we as adults don’t remember, because we don’t think that way anymore.”  “Parents, you’re their frontal cortex, because they don’t have one yet.”
• Joseph A. Califano, Chairman and Founder of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA*) at Columbia University: “Nine Facets of Parental Engagement” from his latest book, which lent its title to the conference -  a ‘how-to’ checklist for parents:
  • Be there: Get involved in your children’s lives and activities.
  • Open the lines of communication and keep them open.
  • Set a good example: Actions are more persuasive than words.
  • Set rules and expect your children to follow them.
  • Monitor your children’s whereabouts.
  • Maintain family rituals such as eating dinner together.
  • Incorporate religious and spiritual practices into family life.
  • Get Dad engaged — and keep him engaged.
  • Engage the larger family of your children’s friends, teachers, classmates, neighbors and community.

For the complete article by Bob Curley, appearing on Join Together’s website, click here.