Preschoolers and Substance Abuse

Find remarkable prevention and treatment strategies for preschool-age children of substance abusers in this informative volume. It provides an overview of the various problems exposure to substance abuse can cause for preschool children. Because of the strong influences parents have on their children, early childhood is a critical time for intervention to counteract the damaging effects of alcohol and drug abusing parents. Research shows that attitudes about alcohol and other drugs are already formed by junior high school level, and senior high school is too late for significant attitude change. Preschoolers and Substance Abuse promotes preschool age as the ideal time to apply strategies that will aid the family in building the self-esteem, trust, autonomy, and initiative necessary to protect the child from further problems caused by addictive parents. Intervention strategies are presented in a succinct manner, making them easy for practitioners, health officials, government officials, and family members to put into immediate practice.

This book offers a unique approach to substance abuse, treating it as a community and societal problem rather than an individual problem. Intervention and treatment strategies are geared toward the substance abuse problem itself as well as how it impacts children and family systems. The harmful impact of alcohol or drug abusive parents is evaluated for all stages of childhood development, from pre-natal influences through infancy and the preschool years. Some of the harmful results of alcohol and drug abuse affecting preschool children addressed in this volume include violence, sexual abuse, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and intra-uterine exposure to drugs. The authors outline a comprehensive list of imperatives for a future agenda to protect preschool children from suffering the consequences of their parents’substance abuse. Public health officials, decision makers, practitioners, and legislators will find a series of policy recommendations including increased research, substance abuse training for child care workers, increased outreach and education for expectant mothers, and community-based outreach programs to insure ethnic or socioeconomic sensitivity and appropriateness.