Q: I’ve quit drinking and joined Alcoholics Anonymous, but how do I make amends to my children for how it has affected them?
A: Fortunately for you, kids are remarkably resilient. If you continue your road to sobriety and commit yourself to responsibility around the house, you can repair your relationships with your family over time, by being there for your children and listening to all that they have to tell you. Your kids will let go of their past grievances for you and build their lives with your life from here on in on a mountain of love.
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Your road to sobriety is loaded with plus advantages for all of your children. Watching you being sober, and making that change in your life, is successful role modelling for them. The message is that they too can fix things up if somewhere along the way their lives go off the rails a bit. Not only that, but this new dad they have is now a reservoir of support, someone to whom they can talk when they need to do so. And sober, you make your home all that much safer, healthier for everyone and a fun place to be. If you want to improve everyone’s mental health, it is there wrapped up in a garment of sobriety.
You need to review your motivation. Addicts are more successful with their recoveries when they do so for their own reasons. You can’t quit drinking for your children. Do it for yourself.
Quitting for the kids means that in some obscure way the kids become responsible if you have a relapse or two and that is not good.
Here is how it works. You do not quit drinking for your kids’ sake, but you might quit because you like the dad you become when you are sober. You don’t quit drinking for your wife’s sake, but you might quit because you like the man you are when you are sober. The truth is that you can only beat an addiction when you do so for your sake.
Recovery means more than cutting out a few drinks here and there. Recovery means building a whole new life for yourself. It means being the author of that life, of creating within yourself the kind of person you want to become, and in doing so, in bringing to your home the excitement of rebirth, you have just opened countless doors for your family to follow their dreams as well. Isn’t that what parenting is all about?
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan. Contact: jandrews@producer.com.
