Jessica Lahey.Photo: Tim Lahey
“We weren’t supposed to talk about what I saw right in front of me — the slurring, the forgetting, the ‘I’m just going to lay down for a nap,’ " says Lahey, 50. “There was a lot of napping.”
Now, all Lahey does is talk about it — her ownexperience with alcohol, the role of genetics and other risk factors, and how parents can “inoculate” their children from a life of substance abuse. The former teacher and author of the 2015 bestselling parenting guideTheGift of Failureis out now with her second book,The Addiction Inoculation. The product of years of research and expert interviews, it comes as Lahey marks this summer her eighth year of sobriety.
“This is the book I feel I was born to write,” she tells PEOPLE in an interview for the latest issue of the magazine.
The Addiction Inoculation.
“Goody Two-shoes”
Lahey never expected to be an authority on drinking.
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Abstaining through her two pregnancies, Lahey recalls that she “barely drank” while nursing her younger son. “It wasn’t even that I was drinking so much. It was that I was thinking about drinking all the time. That’s when things started to slip out of control,” she says.
Jessica Lahey with her son.Courtesy Robert Potts
By the time the younger of her two sons was in elementary school, she was drinking at least a bottle a day. Then, less than three weeks after she turned 43 in 2013, Lahey got blackout drunk at her mother’s birthday party. Her father confronted her the next morning.
“He looked me in the eye and said, ‘I know what an alcoholic looks like, and you are an alcoholic,’ " she recalls. “I was able to say, ‘You’re absolutely right.’ "
That night, she went to her first 12-step meeting. “That’s when I started talking about it. And I haven’t stopped talking about it since.”
5 Things Parents Can Do
From her research forThe Addiction Inoculationand her own personal experience, Lahey offers these tips for protecting kids from substance abuse:
1.Start with Yourself
What habits and attitudes about alcohol and drugs do you communicate, both verbally and in practice, to your kids? Our children tend to do as we do, not as we say, so make sure you model healthy behaviors for your kids.
2.Talk Early, Talk Often
Conversations about drugs and alcohol need to start with talk about health and safety when kids are very young. Create a family environment where kids are encouraged to ask questions and raise concerns.
Jessica Lahey with her sons.Courtesy Jessica Lahey
3.Don’t Lecture
Children are more apt to engage in two-way discussions. Use your kid’s interests to find the side door into the conversation. When you listen to the topics that mean something to him, that shows he’s worth listening to.
4.Increase Kids' Sense of Self-Efficacy
This belief in their own ability to cope with challenges — and ultimately succeed — comes from trying, doing, failing and trying again. Teach an older kid to make dinner from scratch and see what they create.
5.Use Inoculation Messaging
One of the best ways to prepare kids to say, “No, thanks, I’m good,” is to practice saying, “No, thanks, I’m good.” Arming kids with counterarguments for substance use will shore up their defenses against peer pressure.
For more of Lahey’s personal story pick up the new issue of PEOPLE on newsstands Friday.
source: people.com
