Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differe Nces by Leonard Sax Md Phd

Author:Leonard Sax Md Phd [Sax, Leonard Md Phd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non Fiction
ISBN: 9780307419583
Amazon: B000SEIIPW
Publisher: Harmony
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

The Day Everything Changes

Most parents I’ve known don’t think their kids are doing drugs. Other kids, maybe. But not their kid. Then comes the day when they find out. Mom discovers drug paraphernalia in her son’s pants pocket. Or Dad finds an incriminating e-mail message on his daughter’s computer.

What do you do now?

Remember the principles we talked about earlier:

establish the prohibition;

offer alternatives.

Whether you have a daughter or a son, you need to make clear that drug use is prohibited. But the right alternative depends on whether we’re talking about a girl or a boy. If your daughter is smoking in order to relax, you need to help her find other ways to loosen up. If your daughter is using Dexedrine to lose weight, you need to offer her safer ways to lose weight. Join an exercise club with your daughter. Or better yet, help her to accept herself as she is, and shift the focus away from how she looks.

If you have a son who’s a risk-taker, a son who’s using drugs because he’s looking for a thrill, you need to help him explore safer, healthier ways to get that risk-taking tingle. Snowboarding, skiing, mountain biking, motocross, mountain climbing.

Wait a second, you’re thinking. You’ve just discovered your son is using drugs. I’m telling you to buy your son a snowboard or a mountain bike. Am I saying that you should reward your son for using drugs? What about punishment?

We’ll talk more about discipline in the next chapter. I’m not saying that you can’t discipline your son, or your daughter. But it’s not enough just to take away your daughter’s cell phone or your son’s driving privileges. You have to offer alternatives. Positive alternatives that ease your daughter’s hurt or satisfy your son’s desire for excitement.

The other objection I hear from parents of sons in this situation is that the alternatives I’m suggesting are risky. Your son could break his leg snowboarding. He could crack his skull mountain biking.

That’s all true. But those risks are healthy risks. When your son allows a drug dealer to stick a needle in his arm, your son has entered a much darker world.

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