Saturday, February 11, 2006

Searching rooms?

I have had several different people recommend searching Evan's room. I joined an addicition recovery discussion group and several people there recommend it. Someone left a comment here recommending it too.

The reasons for it so far have been:

  1. Protect yourself in terms of legality/liability. If he has illegally purchased drugs in his room then that is clearly a problem. If he over-doses on drugs legally or illegally purchased that too is a liabilty.
  2. Addicts are sneaky and typically have drugs hidden. No matter what he says, he probably has drugs hidden away. Addicts don't tend to "run out" (which he recently claimed).

So I am pondering. The liability issue is a real concern. I will have to talk to the social worker about it.

The other issue...I'm still on the fence about. On one hand searching his room, making him take drug tests all make sense, and I may decide to do it. On the other hand I don't know that it really helps him. Hubby and I keep coming back to the same place. In six months he will be living on his own. If we provide the control for him now, then he will not develop it on his own.

Of course there is another issue -- already Andrew knows what is going on. Brian will know if Evan goes into a residential program. They can't be given the message that drug abuse is tolerated.

Our plan has been to wait until we get appointments with the drug rehab assessment center. We were hoping that by that time we could get a commitment from Evan to get clean (so far he has only made a commitment to try a treatment and see if it works). Once we have that then I was hoping that he would understand why we needed to ensure that his room was clean of drugs. I was hoping that he would agree that regular drug screenings were an important motivator for staying clean himself.

But I was fully prepared at that point to say that screening and searches were a condition of living here.

I have just wanted to give Evan a chance to make the journey himself, with support, not control, from us.

On the other hand I don't want to expose myself to liability.

I think I will leave a voice mail on the social worker's cell phone. I can tell her frankly that I am covering my ass and that I will search his room if she wants me to.

1 comment:

  1. I have absolutely NO qualms about thoroughly searching a child's room, and have done so already a couple times. The first time will be SOP in this house, a few days after the child moves in and without their knowledge. If nothing serious is found, then I won't do it again until I have specific suspicions, but then I won't hesitate to do it again as needed.

    It's a liability/CYA thing, but it's also a way to do what I can to ensure that nothing bad starts to get established and run too long unchecked. My job is to protect these kids, from others and from themselves, for as long as they live here.

    I'd obviously go for it.

    ReplyDelete

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