Parents with adult or teen children that are addicted know the problems that come along with that addiction. If you are a parent trying to figure out a way to help your child get help for their addiction, there are plenty of tools you can use. Today, we will discuss one of those tools, tough love, usually used with intervention. Before starting an intervention and discussing tough love, have the information for recovery in hand to give the addict.
Tough love
Is tough love the right tool for you to use with your child to get him or her the help they need for addiction?
What is tough love? Tough love consists of making rules for the addict they must follow or deal with the consequences for not following the rules. For example, the rule is no drugs or alcohol in the house, or the result is they must move out.
Generally, when used during an intervention, there will be more than one rule or condition the addict must adhere to, and each one will have a consequence. When the adult child has children of their own, but their addiction is not allowing them to provide for their child, the consequence could be you will file for custody of the child.
If the addict is spending bill money on alcohol or drugs instead of paying bills, the consequence could be no financial help with bills, food, or legal assistance. If the addiction leads to violence in the home, the result will be you will call the police and not provide legal help.
Before starting tough love
There are two things you must understand with tough love is that you must enforce the consequences; if not, the addict will continue with their bad behavior and addiction. The other thing is this, tough love may not work, which means you have to move on with your life without the addict. This can be tough for parents and siblings. So before you start using tough love as a tool, make sure that you are committed and will stick with the consequences. However, tell them when they achieve recovery, they will be allowed back in your life, so they know that the door is not closed forever.
Make sure that the addict understands that you love them and will be there for them for their recovery. That you can no longer accept their addiction or the way that addiction causes them to act in your home or life to help persuade them to enter recovery. The goal of the intervention is to get the addict the help they need without the family falling apart.
449 Recovery can help with a detox program that is continuously under monitoring. We provide several therapies, including individual, family, and group. Call us today (855) 435-7449 to learn more about our treatments and tools for intervention, and the life skills we teach patients to reduce the chance of relapse.