MUSINGS

Alcohol and Parenting Don’t Mix

3 Ways Sobriety Can Make For A Better Parent

I got sober a couple of years after my son was born.

He was just a little over two when I finally found the courage to tell a room full of people — I did not know — that I was an alcoholic.

Ironically enough it was also Fathers Day of 2017 when all of this occurred. Even though my son was not there, he was the primary reason I was there.

The reason I share this is because in the first two years of being his dad I knew I was not bringing my full self to the table. Don’t get me wrong, I was not a negligent parent by any means, but I was not fully his dad at the same time.

I was half the parent I could be just like I was half the human I could be because of my use of alcohol and what it represented. And the thought that kept running through my head before Father’s Days 2017 was…

“…I have to be more and do better for him.”

So when I gave up alcohol, got sober, and did the work it directly impacted my parenting. In my opinion, it all goes hand in hand because…

…the things that drive us to drink or cope will project onto our parenting and will limit our ability to be fully alive and aware as a parent.

Now that’s a pretty heavy statement and it might take multiple articles to unwrap all of it. For now let’s just focus on three ways sobriety and an alcohol free life can make for a better parent.

So please keep reading regardless of your relationship with alcohol. If you are a parent and feel alcohol is not offering value to your parenting life I believe these are attainable for anyone.

You Are Fully Conscious

With sobriety comes awareness. The work — however you do it — requires us to be honest with ourselves so we can change. Not wanting to change the past, of course, but to change the now in order to shift our future.

And that includes our children.

The beauty of sobriety is that we are, in essence, learning to re-parent ourselves. We are getting to know our inner child much like we get to know our children while they grow.

We become conscious of our inner child’s needs and wants alongside with becoming conscious of our children’s needs and wants. It’s really quite beautiful if you think about it and truly embrace it all.

What’s really powerful though — navigating sobriety alongside parenting — is that we can become conscious of how our past, trauma, fear, generational trauma, grief, and even how our parents raised us impacts our parenting.

Now that is conscious parenting and is maybe one of the most powerful ways sobriety and an alcohol free life can make parenting easier. When you unlock that awareness and knowledge, it opens up a whole new way of parenting and connection with your kids.

There is a lot more to this topic and there are some great resources out there. For starters I highly recommend Dr. Shefali Tsabary’s books The Conscious Parent and The Awakened Family. She primarily focuses on being a better parent, but that work impacts everything even if alcohol and sobriety is not at the forefront of the conversation.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

You Break The Chain

Since I brought up the topic of generational trauma let’s chat about that because getting sober and giving up alcohol can allow you to end it once and for all.

In my experience, one of the biggest hurdles in sobriety and parenting is understanding our parents and those that came before them. Some people might disagree with that statement, but I believe it is vital to becoming the best parent and human we can be.

Just as our drinking and use of alcohol can be a learned behavior so can our parenting. Everything we do, how we parent, how we act, the ways in which we cope are all a result of how we were raised and how our parents were raised.

It does not have to continue, however, because we have the ability to…

The beautiful thing about life, sobriety, and awareness is that we can evolve if we want to. We have the chance to do things differently not only as parents, but as humans free of anything that might hold us back.

And that includes using alcohol to numb our senses, to take the edge off, to celebrate kids going back to school (that actually happens where I live), to wind down with, or whatever other excuses we can come up with.

All of these habits and coping mechanisms are learned and will be passed onto our children unless we are willing to end it.

We do that by breaking the chain of toxicity that has come before so that we, in turn, raise a new generation of emotionally intelligent human beings who do not need substances to cope with life or get through their day.

Be sure to check out Mark Wolynn’s It Didn’t Start With You if you are interested in knowing more about how family trauma, how it is passed on, and how you can do something about it.

You Set A Healthy Example

And all of this leads to us being the first and foremost example to our children about how life can — or cannot — be lived and handled.

A six pack or a few glasses of wine a few times a week — or every day — may seem harmless, but repeated over the course of eighteen years? Not only is that just not healthy for someone, a child grows into a young adult and then sees the norm being…

…well, every day ends with alcohol cause it helps take the edge off.

If the going gets tough, shit hits the fan, and everything feels like it’s falling apart and our mantra becomes…

…I’m so stressed and just need a drink to calm my nerves.

Our children will learn and assume that alcohol is the best way to cope with chaos. Instead of seeing us face whatever challenges may be headed our way, they will witness us hiding from the challenges in a liquid we have somehow convinced ourselves will alleviate the problem.

Instead, we have a chance to show them what it means to thrive within the storms and challenges of life. We can teach them that something like alcohol may delay the inevitable, but is never the solution to a problem.

Putting alcohol to the side though — since there are copious amounts of ways people deal with stress, anxiety and life in general — what it comes down to is just showing our kids that life can be faced on life’s terms.

We don’t need to hide. We don’t need to run. We can remain calm while balancing between fear and chaos. If we show them it is possible, they will handle life much better than us or those that came before.

They won’t need alcohol or anything else to face whatever life throws at them. They will have watched us and learned that nothing is insurmountable and anything can be faced with clear mind, body, and spirit.

In Closing

Well there you have it, my friends! There are many more ways that sobriety can make for a better parent, but these three are a great starting points and I hope that one or all of them motivated you somehow.

Of course, we can save money, be less tired, have more energy if we cut alcohol out of our lives as parents as well. But if we don’t focus on the root issues around why alcohol is affecting our parenting life — so we can experience these three benefits — well, nothing else really matters.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments as I’d love to hear from you and get your take on the topic.

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Thanks for your time and support and talk soon!

Clark

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