Meth & Children

Growing up in a meth household is going to mean many broken promises that the adults will make to the children but rarely live up to. These types of broken promises usually center around event-based issues like birthdays, Christmas and other religious observations, sports activities, school activities and so on - basically all the things that give children something to look forward to and give them a sense of order to their lives. But they don't have that. Nothing can be depended on, and order is more often replaced with complete chaos.

But the more profound trust factors involve emotion-based issues, like being able to trust what adults will be like personality-wise at any given moment. Most of us (if we were lucky) walked home from school with a degree of certainty of how things would be when we got home. We could usually count on our parents being a certain way, the house being a certain way, and so on.

But children from homes where meth is used or manufactured have no such certainty. If they find their parents at home or awake at all, they might be docile and happy, or they might be enraged, violent, paranoid, or any of the other mental states a meth addict can assume from moment to moment. The kids will really never know whether they'll come home to find the kind, happy "Dr. Jekyll," or the perversely evil, mean and volatile Mr. Hyde. From one day to the next, it's a coin toss as to what "home" will be like. But even at a very young age, if you've learned anything, you've learned that you must act differently with Mr. Hyde than you do with Dr. Jekyll. Because failure to do so can have dire consequences.

And how about the house, or "home" itself? It might be unusually neat in one area, and a pig-sty in others. Bedding may go for months without being changed, and food (what little there often is) may be rotting on the counter because the fridge is being used for "other purposes." Meth addicts tend to feel if they're not hungry, no one else is either.

There may be no one in the house, or it may be full of strangers. The house may be deadly quiet, or deafeningly noisy. You never know - you can never depend on anything and you can really never trust how things will be.

So again, children from these environments develop coping mechanisms to avoid the constant disappointment. You stop depending on anyone or trusting anyone because by not trusting or depending on anyone, you're never let down. Disappointment gradually becomes irrelevant, because after a while, you train yourself never to expect anything. Anything of course, except unpredictability and chaos. And because you expect unpredictability and chaos, as best you can, you remain on guard for it.

And when disrespectful, shameful, abusive or bizarre behavior occurs, you will either disqualify it, deny it, or disguise it. And whatever weakness, vulnerability and fear you do feel, you'll deny that too, and won't let it show. You'll build a shell around yourself so emotions don't get out, and "people" don't get in.

Well of course, this learned behavior, to one degree or another, will likely follow the child into adulthood and barring intervention, for their entire life. That's why what's happening with meth children today (or the children of any addict) is something society will be paying for in a variety of ways for years to come. Addiction, in many forms is in a way, one of those types of "gifts that keep on giving."

Next we examine how children from meth environments develop attitudes toward society in general, the absence of parental bonding, and a little later on, some findings concerning meth use by women carrying a fetus in the womb.