<p>How would you react if you found out your kid did cocaine at college?</p>
<p>I’d be sick about it, but I don’t know what I would do. I have some concerns about drug use in my own family, and I don’t know how to address that. It leaves you feeling pretty helpless.</p>
<p>He’d be on his own in funding the remainder of his college career (three semesters to go).</p>
<p>Did it once or is regularly using?</p>
<p>Very worried. I have experience with the extremely unpleasant situation of becoming dependent on a drug (a prescription drug in my case), and it’s a situation that you really, really want to avoid.</p>
<p>Cocaine is extremely dangerous. It can cause heart damage, among its other side effects. It is often cut with even nastier drugs.</p>
<p>First, I would make sure child knew the side effects, then I would expect him/her to move home and transfer to local college if they expected me to continue paying for school. Yes, even if it were “just once”–because I’d want those friends gone. </p>
<p>I would also contact the college administration and let them know. I might even threaten legal action.</p>
<p>I would be upset and worried, and would let my student know my concerns,a and that if they got into legal problems, those problems would be theirs to solve.</p>
<p>However, I would not stop providing whatever funding I had been doing for their education. At the same time, I would hold them responsible for any grade problems, something I’d do anyway. For instance, I always have told my kids that I would not pay for them to make up any course that they had flunked.</p>
<p>I’d also let them know that if I found that they had brought drugs into my house or car, they would immediately need to find alternative living/transportation arrangements.</p>
<p>My younger S also knows that for my husband and I to help with his education, he’ll need to maintain a 3.0 average each semester. (I didn’t do this with my older S, but from that experience, learned the importance of setting some kind of gpa criterion for my husband and I to provide help with our kids’ education.)</p>
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<p>For what? For your child’s indiscretions? What can the school do?</p>
<p>Look, I have tons of issues with drug use (let’s say that I have a very close family member with a dependency issue), but you can’t blame others for the user. That’s just irresponsible. Place blame where blame should lie.</p>
<p>Having gone through undergrad, been offered to smoke pot and never have, and generally avoided situations where drugs come up, I can say that people deliberately seek out drugs if they want them. Why should anyone else, particularly the school, be responsible for a student going off-campus and getting a hit? </p>
<p>This isn’t an issue of poor administration or even bad parenting. It’s an issue of an independent **adult<a href=“something%20that%20the%20helicopter%20parents%20seem%20to%20avoid”>/b</a> making a bad decision. What’s next, suing your child’s workplace when he’s 40 and a coworker offers him a joint? C’mon…</p>
<p>did cocaine…well I did cocaine in my younger days, not often, but I was in my 20s and it was stupid, yeah, but in our culture of popping pills for just about anything, what do we expect</p>
<p>would parents have a worse reaction to cocaine than binge drinking, which is deadly</p>
<p>as for just once, what, you going to watch your adult offspring forever? bringing them home is stupid…first, they will never open up to you again because if your immediate reaction is to haqve them withdraw from school that they spent 4 years plus getting into because they partied once or twice is kidding yourself</p>
<p>and if you think your kid won’t find similar “friends” back at home if they really want to, well think again…if it is their nature, it is…and being at a CC won’t protect them</p>
<p>if it was my Ds, well, I would talk about it, talk about the dangers- can’t trust what is in it, etc, the easiness to getting emotionally dependent</p>
<p>but we have to change our culture as well, when you turn on the tv and see ads talking about pop a pill if you are sad, pop another if you are tired, that you should always be “happy” etc., well, what do we expect?</p>
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<p>One of my high school friend’s sources was a CC student… I knew personally of a few guys at my CC who scored all the time.</p>
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<p>The aforementioned family member of mine’s drug problem played out while in the home. It didn’t stop her much.</p>
<p>Talk about it and change the culture…okay.</p>
<p>I heard an interview given by Colin Powell in the early '90’s in which someone asked him why he never got involved in drugs growing up in the Bronx as a boy. He laughed and something to the effect that “My Mama would’ve given me a whipping that wouldn’t have enabled me to sit down for a year.”</p>
<p>My sons have heard that story repeated since they were little: in other words, there will be <em>consequences</em> for using drugs in this family. If I found out they were using any drugs in college they know there would be severe consequences to their current lifestyle a lot more severe than a talking-to or maintaining a certain gpa. They wouldn’t be shocked about it. But then, my husband and I are not sending our kids to college to party.</p>
<p>hereshoping,</p>
<p>All the whoopings in the world didn’t stop my relative. In fact, it convinced her even more of her own twisted outlook that she was a victim.</p>
<p>Drug use isn’t a problem with a singular solution. When dealing with the actions of adults, when is there ever? People make mistakes, and yes, there should be consequences. But taking away their college education for an indiscretion that may be a one time thing to me reeks of revenge and not discipline.</p>
<p>Send the student to Harvard.</p>
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<p>No I wasn’t talking about solutions to the problem. I was talking about CLEAR messages being sent to children as prevention. I don’t think expecting a 21 year old to pay for his education if he engages in illegal activity is too much to ask. And neither would they; it’s the message they’ve been receiving since they were toddlers. Too many mixed messages from parents today, imo. (P.S. I’ve never even raised a hand to my children–but the Colin Powell story came in handy to convey a message. ;))</p>
<p>Of course, good role models are becoming harder and harder to find. I can imagine kids in the future may be saying: “If President Obama used cocaine when he was a kid, why can’t I?”</p>
<p>While the physical consequences of binge drinking may be more dangerous than those of cocaine (which is debatable), being under 21 and in possession of alcohol carries much lighter sentences than being under 21 and in possession of cocaine.</p>
<p>"Of course, good role models are becoming harder and harder to find. I can imagine kids in the future may be saying: “If President Obama used cocaine when he was a kid, why can’t I?” "</p>
<p>Of course, because it is much better for a president to lie. The silly senator should take a page from Bush’s book.</p>
<p>I am appalled at the suggestions to sue the school and cut funding for the kid on the first offense. Wow, didn’t anyone else besides cgm do drugs in your youth?</p>
<p>The kid needs some help, no doubt. And some firm boundaries. Most definitely let him/her know that continuing the drugs is not an option and that funding will be cut. But not on the very first offense. Kids make mistakes. I think a far more important issue is what is going on with that kid that they are now doing drugs. They need some counseling and some love, AND firm boundaries. I would make it very clear that they need to get some help NOW and that if there is a recurrence THEN the funding gets cut. Otherwise, if the kids is forced to leave school, you are effectively removing the one positive thing in his/her life, the one thing that can help him/her have a better future, and essentially throwing him/her into the arms of the loser druggie culture.</p>
<p>Now, sorry if this freaks you out, but I would be highly suspicious that it was really ‘just’ cocaine. Coke was not a big deal in the 70s. Far more nasty were the harder drugs like speed and heroin. Well, nowadays coke is much harder to come by, and the nasty meth/ice is the drug of choice because it’s cheaply made. There is a huge epidemic of the stuff going on right now. I would caution you to take some sort of action NOW, because if you kid is doing meth, we’re not just talking about legal problems or bad grades - we’re talking health, serious addiction, and possibly even death. This is some bad stuff and you don’t want to mess around with it.</p>
<p>You must ascertain what it is your kid is doing. A lot of kids, and even adults in reputable occupations, are into meth. I know this because I just saw a documentary on it about 2 weeks ago. They interviewed a teenage girl who got down to 70 pounds, another who lost her teeth, a ‘soccer mom’ who lost her kids, and a DOCTOR…all hooked on meth.</p>
<p>It’s nasty stuff and much more readily available than mere cocaine. First, know your enemy. Then confront it. But do it with firmness and LOVE.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
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<p>Says who? I didn’t say I would throw my son out of my home. I said he could pay for school on his own: a not unrealistic expectation for a 21 year old, imo. Of course we would pay for treatment if the situation were that bad. I still have a younger son to put through college, probably one more expensive than a state school. This is why the message is clear to my older son that college is for the purpose of being educated to lead to a career which is self-supporting. The expectations have been clear for my kids from the time they were little. They are happy, fun-loving kids and doing great academically and socially. They don’t, btw, hang with kids who drink or do drugs. If my kids told me stories about how their close friends did drugs, but maintained they were straightedge, I’d be concerned, leal.</p>
<p>My boys will swear Colin Powell’s mama and I went to the same parenting classes, I was a TA that year!</p>
<p>Kat</p>