Niki Shisler

When I was pregnant with my first child, I went to ante-natal classes to learn how to have a baby. We were taught how to breathe and when to push; why we should do our pelvic floor exercises and the principles of breast-feeding. I remember our teacher making reference to the fact that the birth, that moment that all of us mothers-to-be were focused on, was not The End but, actually, The Beginning. The beginning of our new lives as parents. That part didn’t faze me though. The blood and the pain of labour scared me; but being a mother? No, I felt equal to the task: I would be a good mother.

A few weeks later, as I sat on a hospital bed, with a new-born Joey in my arms, the enormity of what I’d done hit me like a stone: I was responsible for this brand new person. Me! What possessed me to think I could do it? I was filled with an overwhelming love for my child, and an overwhelming terror that I was going to cause him irreparable damage. Here he was, a clean slate, fresh and entirely innocent and I was supposed to guide and mould this tiny scrap of a being into a fully formed adult. A state that, it had suddenly become horribly apparent, I had barely managed to attain myself.

That scrap is almost twenty years old now. We made it to adulthood together, and he wasn’t the only one who had to do some growing-up along the way. No parent ever wants to take the “don’t do as I do, do as I say” route, but when you have made the kind of spectacular fuck-ups that I have made, hypocrisy is sometimes your best option.

I have been in recovery from alcoholism for over eleven years now; Joey was just eight when I got sober and, inevitably, my drinking had affected his life profoundly. The years leading up to my ‘rock bottom’ were a fairly typical example of alcoholic misery and, as I struggled to retain a grip on normal life, it is safe to say that my parenting skills left much to be desired. Joey learnt to be self-sufficient at a very early age; he could make his own breakfast at three years old; he sometimes missed school because I was too hung-over to get up and get him there and, most damagingly of all, he witnessed at first hand my dysfunctional relationship with my boyfriend (I had split with Joey’s father when he was 18 months old) and so, despite his tender years, he worried about me. Though Joey was never physically hurt or mistreated, he was also denied a child’s fundamental right to feel secure. As my life became increasingly chaotic Joey spent increasing amounts of time staying with my mother until, eventually, he was living with her full-time. The guilt was crushing; knowing I was no longer able to care for my own child filled me with almost unbearable shame that, at least for a while, made my drinking spiral even further out of control. Ultimately however, the pain of that separation was one of the key things that propelled me into recovery.

A few months into my sobriety, Joey and I moved into a new home together and I began the delicate job of repairing our fractured relationship. Over the following year or so, I gradually regained Joey’s trust. It was a slow process, I had let him down so often in the past, that he needed time to believe that things really had changed. Fortunately for me, I had nature on my side; children are very forgiving, and by and large they want to believe the best of their parents. They love us by default and, it seems, only in the most appallingly abusive relationships is that love irreparably damaged. Joey and I were ultimately able to emerge from the black hole of my drinking with a new-found respect for each other and relatively unscathed.

It has been over eleven years since Joey and I took those first faltering steps towards each other and, in that time, our family life has changed beyond all recognition. Around a year after getting sober I met my husband Danny and, in very quick succession, had first a daughter, Evie, and then just a year later, identical twin boys Felix and Theo. The twins were born with a rare form of muscular dystrophy and we lost Theo aged 7 months. Felix, now almost 8, is profoundly disabled; he is on a ventilator full-time and needs round-the-clock nursing care. It is fair to say that we have had our share of stress and drama; Joey has had to cope with situations far outside the usual teenage worries.

Every parent worries about their child getting into problems with drink or drugs; now we have yet another report showing that British teenagers drink and drug more than any other European kids. We know that drugs are readily available in almost every school, and the arrival of the alcopop a few years back means that teens have a readily available source of palatable, and innocent tasting, booze. But, in my case, those worries feel more acute, more concrete.

First of all, I know a great deal about alcoholism, and I can trace the roots of my own addiction right back into childhood. I know that addicts do not spring, fully-formed, into life overnight; so I scan my children for early warning signs, looking out for traces of obsessiveness or dependency. I know the terrible pain of the active addict; the soul-crushing, esteem-shattering living hell that it takes you to, and I cannot bear the thought that any child of mine should have to go through that. I also know that I am lucky to have survived; too many of my peers didn’t. I have attended funerals where I have seen shell-shocked parents, wondering how their beautiful baby became a person that they couldn’t recognise; one who died a sordid, lonely death far too young. And, of course, I know the statistics: addiction is a “family disease” and the child of an alcoholic has a significantly higher chance of also developing substance abuse problems. The addict in me knows this stuff, but the mother in me knows stuff too and finding the balance is not always easy.

I grew up in a typically hippy home in the sixties and seventies; recreational drug use was an integral part of the world I knew. The flower children believed that they were educating us about the realities of the world of drugs, and it was this that would protect us. There was a genuine belief at that time that drugs were essentially benign, and that knowledge is power. I know that my mother has carried guilt about this, blaming herself for my descent into addiction, though I have told her many times that it was not her fault. My husband on the other hand, grew up in a deeply religious and conservative household, where drink and drug problems were alien, distant issues. And yet we both ended up in the same place; we met in an AA meeting. We both have parents who love us desperately, who would do anything to protect us, and whose motives in the way we were raised, were only to have us grow into happy, balanced and fulfilled adults. Two completely different paths, one destination. Two loving families that watched, bewildered, as the child they adored spiralled into a darkness they couldn’t understand.

So I know, better than most, that there is no sure-fire parenting strategy for protecting children from drugs and alcohol. And, whilst I am never entirely comfortable with the idea of addiction as a ‘disease’, I can certainly see that certain thought patterns, those ‘addictive tendencies’ were there from my earliest memories. If I am entirely truthful, I believe that there was nothing my mother could have done or said; addiction was a strand of who I was and would always be until I learnt how to manage it.

One of the hardest things for me as a parent, has been learning to accept that there are some issues which, despite my extensive, first hand experience, I am not qualified to advise my own child on. How do I teach Joey to have a normal relationship with alcohol when my own has been one of such extremes: first excess and then abstinence? The truth is concepts like ‘moderation’ remain alien to me, and probably always will. The very most I can do is show Joey what not to do. The right path is one that I have to simply trust he will find for himself.

Children learn from their own mistakes alone. Much as we would wish to be able to bolt every door that potentially leads to danger, much as we can plead, lecture or punish, every child will ultimately choose their own path and, sometimes, that path will be bloody. Now, in middle-age, I can look back and see how painful, angst-filled and frightening early adulthood was. For me, like many, it was a minefield of insecurities and anxieties; I, unlike many, cannot envy the young. I dealt with the demons of my youth by self-medicating; anaesthetising the worries and silencing my belligerent inner critic. In recovery I have, belatedly, learnt that there are better, infinitely more effective routes to peace of mind.

So, if the teenage years are a social and emotional battlefield, across which our soft-shelled kids must find their own way, is there anything that we, as parents, can do to help them emerge with all their limbs and faculties intact? I believe there is: we can try to give our children the tools that will help them face whatever difficulties they meet in life. We may not be able to protect our children from the storm, but we can help to protect them through it. I have learnt to incorporate many of the problem-solving skills I have acquired in recovery into the way I parent my children. I try to teach them healthy ways of dealing with emotions and how to know when they need to ask for help. Most importantly, I let them see that sometimes there are dark times in any life but that, even after the very darkest, there will always be another sunrise. Perhaps the most valuable gift we can ever give our children is the knowledge that, whatever happens, there is always hope. And, of course, we can let them know that we will always be there, without judgment or condition, to love the person they are, rather than the person we might wish them to be.

Being a parent is as much about letting go as it is about being there. From slowly pulling back your outstretched arm for baby’s first steps, or following at a discreet distance to watch your child cross the road alone for the first time, to helping your kid move their stuff into their first grotty bed-sit. From the very first cry we are inching backwards until that tiny, helpless new-born is able to stand alone in the world. It can be one of the hardest jobs in the world, to accept that despite your overwhelming love, despite your selfless motives, you have no right to step unbidden into an adult child’s life.

With Joey, I bite my tongue a dozen times a day. I keep my unasked for advice to myself and step back. He is a good kid; funny, kind, smart, and I am as proud of him as I can be. Hard though it is, I have to trust that he will be ok. The road to adulthood is not an easy one, I have no doubt that Joey will have his share of trials, such is life. All I can do is watch and wait and pray.

November 2006