Heather Swenson
Mandy Jesser
English Composition I
1 May 2013
Effects of Parental Drug Abuse on Their Children

As soon as birth, children are exposed to new things; new life experiences that will develop the path of which direction their life will take. Adolescence is the most important time in a child’s life because it is where they learn appropriate behavior from their family and the outside world. Some children are able to use these experiences to differentiate at an early age what is right and what is wrong and hopefully carry this into adulthood. What happens when children are exposed to the wrong experiences at an early age? What happens if children assume that what they are seeing is okay because one of their parents are
Child abuse is a prevalent symptom of parental addiction. More children are abused by a parent that is under the influence of a substance then those who are not. It is estimated that 70 percent of all reported child abuse occurrences stem from parental substance abuse.(Child Abuse and Neglect Statistics) Children will often cover up incidents of child abuse by their parent in an attempt to cover the parent’s addiction because of the fear that it was their fault for not doing something correctly. Another effect parental substance abuse has on a child’s well-being is the state their physical health. Many children suffer from severe stress because of their parent’s addiction. The stress often leads a child to suffer from “gastrointestinal issues, headaches, migraines, asthma or other chronic illnesses.”(Effects of Parental Substance Abuse) The stress that was caused by my ex-husband’s addiction caused my oldest son to develop mono and he was very sick for several months. Due to the lack of care on the part of the addicted parent, these conditions are usually left untreated, causing long-term health issues for the child. Children are often affected by their parent’s drug abuse in other ways that harm their physical well-being. Addicted parents often spend copious amounts of money on the substance they are addicted to. This causes a family to have little to no money for basic hygiene products or food for that matter. Children of addicts often appear