By Dr Virupaksha Devaramane

Udupi, Feb 14: Every year one week around Valentine’s Day is celebrated as COA week. This is to raise awareness about emotional problems that children suffer due to their parental addiction. In US every 5th child lives with a parent who drinks excessively. Children and other people who live with an addict follow an uncertain and unstructured routine that of an addict. Hence, they suffer the effects of alcohol even without drinking. It’s been said that a child whose parent is an addict will never get a childhood. A child develops ‘basic security’ and ‘basic trust’ by the parental care and affection in the early childhood. But family affected by alcohol leaves the child with parental discord, sudden fights and screams. Children live with fear and uncertainty as there is no fixed time for anything and anything can happen at point of time. Children in such environment suffer silently and to add to their burden they assume all fights in the house are centered around them. The child tries to find magic remedy to clear the mess in the house by being perfectionist herself. She believes that if she commits a mistake, it might increase the addiction in parent and hence the problems at house. She checks and overchecks again and over again to make sure that everything is in place.

The families affected by alcoholism follow unsaid rule of keeping secrets. Neither the addict nor the family member accepts excessive drinking as the major cause of all miseries in the house. Either they deny or minimize the effects. Hence the COAs start following the unsaid rules of family DON’T SPEAK, DON’T TRUST, DON’T FEEL. That’s the beginning of their troubles. They don’t speak out their problems to anybody with fear of being humiliated. Hence, they miss someone helping them out. CoAs have difficulty in trusting people as their basic trust has been hampered. They feel no one values their feelings and decide to keep it to oneself than being expressed and get humiliated.

We know that Verbal abuse, physical abuse, emotional neglect, sexual abuse, emotional abuse is detrimental to the psychological health of child. But these Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are very common in the lives of a CoA. Research reveals repeated exposure to ACEs will hamper their emotional and cognitive development. Hence, they develop deficits in their personality for none of their faults. They feel inferior of themselves and do not make friends with a shame of friends coming home. Their academics are affected as there is no study environment in the house or because they suffer from emotional problems as depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, inferiority. They can even have school refusal as they believe parents won’t fight if they are around. And they remain distracted in class even if they are attending school. A sensible teacher can be helpful to these children helping their academics in school time itself and being empathetic towards their ignorable mistakes. Teachers can involve these children in extracurricular activities and boost their self-esteem.

Research says children with parents who drink excessively have three times more risk of developing alcoholism in their adult life as compared to children of nonalcoholic parents. And it’s been observed that earlier the first use, more the chances of developing dependence. So it becomes our responsibility to delay adolescents’ first use beyond 18 years. Genetic predisposition, parental modelling, easy accessibility and emotional problems increase the risk of substance use in COAs. But altering their environment, encouraging COAs to involve in extracurricular activities like music, drawing, theatre activities will reduce the risk. CoA Week is celebrated across the world to spread the awareness about problems faced COAs and to increase the number of responsible adults in the society who create better tomorrow for CoAs. All that we can do is making these children is to realise popular 7Cs.

You didn’t cause it
You can’t cure it
You can’t control it
But you Can take Care of yourself
By Communicating your feelings
Making healthy Choices and Celebrating YOU

Dr Virupaksha Devaramane is consultant psychiatrist at Dr A V Baliga Memorial Hospital, Udupi.