WARNING SIGNS

Warning Signs: A Guidebook for Parents : How to Read the Early Signals of Low Self-Esteem, Addiction, and Hidden Violence in Your Kids

by John Kelly, Brian J. Karem

From the quietest rural town to the noisiest, crowded city, violence and drug abuse have spread like an epidemic. Pioneering addiction counselor John Kelly has been treating those with addictive behavior for over 15 years and award-winning investigative reporter Brian Karem has analyzed criminal behavior for the acclaimed TV Show America's Most Wanted. Experts in detecting the warning signs of destructive behavior, their no-nonsense book, WARNING SIGNS: A Guidebook for Parents — How to Read the Early Signals of Low Self-Esteem, Addiction, and Violence in Your Children (LifeLine Press; 0-89526-18948 $21.95), provides unshakable evidence that behind this epidemic — the root cause of all addictive illness and most violent behavior — is low self-esteem.

What they assert is perhaps a bitter pill for some and not without controversy. To begin with, the authors eschew genetic predisposition to addiction for several reasons, among them, "Low self-esteem is prevalent in drug and alcohol abusers years before drugs are used," they say. "A person walking around feeling he is somehow not as good as others does not need a defective gene on which to blame his pain."

Preventing low self-esteem begins with specific gender parenting — fathers for boys and mothers for girls, they say. Those involved with school violence are most often boys, and "it is also widely reported that those involved have a poor relationship with the same-gender parent — the father." They also assert that children who live by strict rules are more likely to be drug-free teenagers, "But we live in a time where disconnect between parent and child is the norm, and apathetic parenting has taken over. By far the largest problem we face with early intervention is the family dynamic: parents want the drug problem cured but don't want to deal with the fact that they are part of the problem."