Talking to your children about drugs is never easy… no matter what their age is. Hoping to make some inroads, four West Michigan hospitals are teaming up to help parents with “THE TALK” and to do it sooner, rather than later.
It’s an award-winning youth drug prevention resource and now, four of West Michigan’s leading hospitals and health care entities are teaming up to expand access to “TalkSooner”.
“We’ve been able to partner with Mercy Health, Metro Health-University of Michigan Health,Cherry Health and Spectrum Health, to bring the Talksooner message of talk early, talk often, talk sooner to all of their patients in a variety of ways. They’ve got things in their offices RX pads, to talk about those difficult subjects, drugs, alcohol, substance abuse.”
Vicki Cavanaugh is formally the Prevention and Advocacy Team Lead at Arbor Circle-and she also serves as the TalkSooner spokesperson. She says the goal of TalkSooner, is just what the name implies. It encourages parents to host that talk about drugs with their kids, but do it sooner, rather than later.
“Really if we can delay the use of substances hopefully until after the age of 21, then we can drastically reduce the incidence of addiction.”
TalkSooner has free educational resources, which include an app and a website..
“The website and the app have lots of info, they have tips on how to talk to your kids, when to talk to your kids, and how to keep that conversation going.”
And believe it or not folks, while you may not always feel this way… studies show that “you”-the parent have the most influence with your kids.”
“No matter how we feel as parents, that they’re not listening or watching us, they really are.”
More than 100 physician offices, lobbies and waiting rooms will feature bilingual posters and wallet cards which invite parents to turn to TalkSooner’s website which you can find at talksooner.org as well as the free app, which is available from the Apple and Google stores.
