Loving Them to Death: When Parents Are Enablers

As parents, most of us like to think that we make the best decisions for our children, that we care for them, and that we protect them as much as we can. When children make bad decisions, it’s too easy to step in and take care of them, clean up their mess, pay off their debts, or loan them money. While this is often done with the best intentions, it leads us down a road of enabling – where our care allows our children to continue using. However, there is support to help adults deal with these issues.

At Oceanfront Recovery, our family therapy helps parents and other adults realize how they have become enablers helping them discover how to change their behavior for the better. Addiction and substance abuse is a problem that affects millions, and as parents, it is our responsibility to help our children escape from it, not enable them.

Types of Enabling Behavior

Enabling behavior can occur at every age level, with young children, young adults, and adults who have moved out of the home.

Enabling children is often easier than you might think and can stem as much from attempting to protect them, give them a chance to do better, or establish a relationship with them. This can result in:

• Letting children spend time with friends who are known to use substances
• Allowing bad behavior to avoid a tantrum or to win approval
• Giving rides to children going to/from places where they can get substances
• Lying for the child (for example, calling in sick to school for them, making excuses for missed appointments, etc.)
• Placing them back in the same school after rehab
• Attempting to get a life back to normal during a substance abuse problem or addiction
• Completing school assignments for the child

Here, your goal should be to force your child to get medical help and then change the circumstances they were pushed into using. Children do not have the capacity to help themselves, and it is your responsibility to take steps to get them help.

Enabling Behavior with Young Adults

Dealing with drug and alcohol use in young adults who still live inside the home makes it extremely easy to enable their behavior. Some common ways young adults are enabled include:

• Ignoring risk behavior
• Letting them live rent-free
• Failing to create consequences for substance use
• Leaving them alone in the house
• Giving rides to friends or school
• Lying for the child
• Denying drug or alcohol use
• Covering up for mistakes or problems
• Offering too much trust
• Letting teens get away with behavior to avoid being the ‘bad guy’ in the relationship
• Ignoring issues or refusing to talk about them
• Blaming others for the addiction

Dealing with addiction and substance abuse in teens can turn an already tumultuous time in the family relationship into a nightmare, but ignoring the problem only makes it worse. Similarly, supporting their behavior by covering up for problems only protects you, not them.

When Adults Enable Other Adults

Enabling your adult children can be complex in that you may take steps to provide for their basic needs, keep them off the street, or keep them out of jail, only to find that this behavior enables your child to continue using. Enabling behaviors include:

• Giving money for rent or food
• Paying debts
• Covering fees or fines
• Offering a place to stay after a night of using
• Bailing them out of jail
• Convincing partners or spouses to stay
• Cleaning up after your child
• Making excuses for their bad decisions

While watching a child lose the things they have worked for is painful, supporting an addict only enables them to continue using. So long as the addict knows that you will step in to cover for their bad decisions, they have no real reason to stop using.

Codependency and Enabling

Codependency is the process of becoming addicted to caring for someone. In a codependent relationship, the caretaker will often give up all or most of their own sense of self to care for the addicted person. In parent/child ponds, codependency can form and interact with, enabling to form a vicious cycle that damages everyone. Codependency often develops when parents see themselves as needed, feel that the child cannot take care of themselves, and spend most of their time on their addicted child or thinking about their addicted child. You may be codependent if you:

• Take steps to hide the addiction
• Avoid confrontation with your child to avoid conflict
• Make excuses for your child’s behavior
• Enjoy the feeling of being needed by your child
• Assume your child is going through a phase and that the addiction will end on its own
• Handle your child’s responsibility or try to
• Continue to give chances despite evidence that you shouldn’t
• Participate in risky behaviors to fulfill your child’s demands

Moving Away from Enabling Behavior

No one decides to be enabling or enabled like no one chooses to become an addict. However, if you or a family member is engaging in enabling behavior, where your actions allow someone else to continue using, it is important to recognize it and move away from that behavior so that the substance-dependent person can move on. Stepping away from enabling behavior means taking steps to recognize that you are enabling and then stopping that behavior.

1. Recognize that you are facilitating your child’s addiction
2. Determine what you can do to step away from your role as an enabler
3. Take steps to end your role as an enabler

While many people advocate tough love or cut addicted children out of your life, respond harshly, and offer punishment for wrongdoings, studies show that this approach should only be used as a last resort because it largely does not work. Instead, detaching with love is a theory that allows you to step back, continue to provide care for your child, and continue to build relationships with them without cutting them out of your life. This process allows you to refuse to give them money, refuse to enable them, and make the hard decisions while remaining present in their life, offering emotional support, and working on getting your child help. Parents are caretakers, and while it can be difficult to see children suffer, that is often what must happen to allow them to reach a state where they are motivated to get clean or sober.

Discover How Oceanfront Recovery Can Help Your Family

If your child is suffering from a substance use disorder, it is important to get them help. A treatment center can help your child to move past their physical addiction, offer therapy to help them recognize and move past the issues behind their addiction. It can help you to take steps to prevent relapse and future substance abuse. The Oceanfront Recovery addiction treatment program can help you or your loved one through the process of recovery from substance use disorder. We provide a variety of substance abuse treatment programs, such as:

• Adderall addiction
• Alcohol addiction
• Benzodiazepine addiction
• Cocaine addiction
• Codeine addiction
• Crack addiction
• Heroin addiction
• Hydrocodone addiction
• Marijuana addiction
• Meth addiction
• Opiate addiction
• Opioid addiction
• Prescription drug addiction
• Suboxone addiction
• Xanax addiction

Our passionate clinicians focus on bringing the underlying causes of addiction to the surface with a modern and effective recovery program. Contact us at Oceanfront Recovery today for a confidential assessment with no obligation.