In the search for autonomy, the adolescent will question the values, habits and especially the prohibitions of childhood. It is common in this phase that the adolescent starts assuming habits of adults. Alcohol and drugs emerge as one of those options. The parents then ask themselves: is he going to become a dependent? It is not easy to answer this because the chance of becoming a dependent after having experienced it depends on many factors: genetic (having a dependent in the family), family models (the fact that the parents drink, for example), tumultuous family relationships, temperament of the family. young (shyness, for example).

What can be done to prevent the young person who has tried alcohol or drugs from becoming a dependent? First, delay this initial experience with alcohol or drugs as much as possible. The sooner he experiences the greater the chance that he will become a dependent. Parents should make this initial experience as difficult as possible. The more the consumption is made easy, obviously, the more consumption occurs. If parents take a stand against it, there is less chance of having an addiction disorder in adulthood. Second, and this is the most important thing, helping the adolescent to experience positive feelings, so as not to have to compensate for his weaknesses and frustrations in drugs. Assist him in developing adaptive behaviors, where you find healthy forms of pleasure.

Development of psychic health in a child

What I am going to say may sound very banal, but after years of study, what I have been able to conclude the best (and I gave up scientific research when I realized this) is that the path to psychic health is love. We examined a sample of 2500 children, staying with each of them for more than 9 hours, and found that the main factors that triggered psychotic symptoms were bullying and violence. What causes a person who has a genetic tendency to evolve into mental disorder is a hostile interpersonal environment: lack of support for the child, isolation, feeling alone, with no one to count on.

The safer a teenager feels, the less aggressive he will be. When we look at the history of these young shooters in American schools, there is one thing that is practically common to all: they felt hostile, excluded and isolated.

I am sure that a world with more tolerance and more love would be a world with less violence.

How to differentiate a material psychotic from a spiritual outbreak.

I don't think it is necessary to differentiate this. In fact, everyone who is experiencing false perceptions of reality needs treatment regardless of the cause. Even because almost every person who is experiencing a mental disorder is connected with entities that have either caused this imbalance, or that are linked to the individual by the natural law of affinities. I cannot say, from a spiritual point of view, how medicines work, but somehow they block the possibilities of disturbance.

Parents and prescribing medications for children

I would like to speak in particular to parents who suffer for their children, I would like to encourage them to maintain hope and continue to persist. I ask that these parents overcome prejudices and do not hesitate to seek the help of a psychiatrist, because medicine is improving a lot and modern medicines and therapy methods can bring a lot of relief. Many people still have prejudice against the figure of the psychiatrist, especially for children. But children also suffer, and a lot.

In some cases, medications such as antidepressants, anxiolytics and antipsychotics may be needed. If necessary, these drugs should be tried. Medicine is advancing at a rapid pace and more and more drugs are available with fewer adverse effects and which do not induce dependency. Medicines are very useful resources in emotional moments of great darkness, when it is difficult to see the light or to get out of a state of anguish or more intense despondency.

In North America, there was clearly an excess of prescriptions for psychiatric drugs for children. In Brazil, I do not see this, because it is not our culture to take a child to a psychiatrist. I see more neglected children, needing to take the medication without doing it, than a child medicated without needing it. Don't be prejudiced, because some children need this help.

Spiritist resources

I would also like to remember the power of prayer as a process of self-healing or intercession for someone. Faced with mental illnesses, we should not open hand of prayer and spiritual passes.

Opponent /defiant disorder

The adult's approach is to prevent the child's secondary gains from this type of behavior. It is the main way for the child to stop opposing and challenging. It is almost always not an outbreak in which the child gets out of control; it is a pattern of behavior that is being sustained, because it has been gaining, and these gains are due to the fact that through opposing / challenging behavior they control people and the environment around them.

Adolescence

It would be absurd and opposed to nature to want to prevent a young person from developing autonomy. That's why they came into the world: to become adults and collaborate with the world. We believe that they are here to transform the world.

We have to learn a new form of relationship. The instinct of the infant brain causes children to pay deep attention to the authority figures (those people who are most imitated and cared for). Fortunately, this instinct disappears. Because we do not want an adult to submit blindly to the determinations of an authority. With the end of childhood, the individual will lose the instinct of blind obedience and he will question. It’s good that he will question, because a value is truly yours only if you’ve questioned it. It is reasoned faith.

Cultural evolution occurs through questioning. But it is in the moments of questioning that the most difficult dialogues are established.

How does a child see his parents? As the best in everything: "my father is the strongest man in the world"; "My mother is the most beautiful woman in the world". The child strongly believes that her parents are role models for everyone. In adolescence the brain loses this instinct and the teenager realizes that his/her parents are people like any other. They don't know everything and they make mistakes too. Deep down, there is a great disappointment, without anyone being responsible for it. They thought things about their parents and found that it is not so. And they will question many things about the family: religiosity and morality. Worry if your child is not questioning. But that passes and in time many will do the same as their parents.

Concern

When we see the young man walking away, the feeling is hopeless. Why? Because we anticipate tragedies when we are facing the unknown. This is our mind. It is a defense mechanism acquired many millennia ago. Often the important part of a dialogue is our fantasy. Most of the time everything is fine.

Keep calm if you need to call your child’s attention, to limit what is really serious. Less important things is a matter of following up.

All your child doesn't want to hear is that you are worried. Because he is also insecure, lost, but he needs to face the situation that is presented to him. Your concern increases his insecurity. He's trying to convince himself that he's under control.

Dialogues

The teenager knows about 40 thousand words, but still does not know how to talk. He is beginning to use reciprocal dialogue to regulate himself, to express himself, to get what he wants, to form coalitions, to influence people, which are the functions of dialogue. We cannot expect him to talk like an adult. Do not expect maturity from his conversation. We are the adult in the conversation and we have to talk like the adult that we are.

Before talking to him, get ready: take a deep breath, think well what you are going to say and how you are going to talk. Take care of your feelings first and then talk to him. Our feelings are shown, they are evident, it is not possible to disguise them. You will not have a good conversation if you have bad feelings. Talk when you're ready for that conversation. Put pride aside: the conversation is not about who is most right. Put the distress aside: talking is not the time to be prospecting everything that may happen. Deal with your anxiety before you talk. A dialogue implies in two ways. At the same time that I issue, I receive. I walk through his thoughts and put myself in his frame of reference, to go with him and understand him.

Start a conversation by talking to yourself. Understand yourself, console yourself, relieve your own guilt, calm your anxieties and then when you are well, go and tell all this to the other. And in this intimate moment of talking to each other, we don't need to be alone in this conversation, because we have the possibility through prayer to bring God into our dialogue.

I suggest that before talking to your children, say a sincere prayer. We can talk to God before any conversation with our child and ask for the wisdom that we don't have and the love that we are not yet able to deliver. And we go into this conversation with the certainty that our children are not only ours, but also children of God and you will not be two in this conversation, there will always be three.