My facebook newsfeed is blowing up with pics of kids getting ready for Red Ribbon Week. It's a week I remember well being a DARE graduate (DARE to keep a kid off drugs -- I can still sing the song). I've never really thought much about Red Ribbon Week other than the half-hearted acknowledgment that it keeps kids off drugs and all that.
Then something happened last week that has me wondering, does it actually work? We were on our way to Grace's gymnastics and rather than listening to KSBJ/AIR1/VBS preschool songs, I was actually listening to a classic rock station (stone me later). Steve Miller Band's The Joker came on -- a song my kids have heard countless times. The chorus came on and I was humming away when a little voice from the backseat said, "mom, what's a toker?" Uh oh. I decided to handle the question head on and quite academically (read sans-jargon) like all questions of this nature. I answered, "someone who smokes marijuana." Then Jack replied, "what's marijuana?" It was at that moment I realized my son's first exposure to drugs was ME. We can discuss all day whether or not that's the "appropriate" method. It was the advent of Red Ribbon Week that got me thinking -- does Red Ribbon Week do the same thing for many of the public school kids who participate?
I'm not arguing that some kids are exposed to drugs early in life and would benefit from frequent and early messages of drug resistance. But what about the other kids? In the name of prevention, are our schools the first "pushers" in our kids' lives?
This post isn't a warning against drug resistance education. It's just something I've been wondering about today...any thoughts from reader-world?
2 comments:
So random you posted this today. As I picked up the kids from preschool and saw all the ribbons at NCE I was wondering about the kids whose parents were addicts and were hiding it. How hard that week must be for them. Trying to participate, knowing their parents are fighting (or lacking the 'fight) at home. What a torn place they must be in. Random, and unrelated. But thought provoking.
Thanks to Red Ribbon Week we've had to attempt to explain drugs to Morgan. Also? She's convinced that failure to do the assigned day's dress-up activity will make her a drug user. Fun week.
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