Happy Holiday? — Well yeah, if only we could figure out how to deal with our family — our spouse or partner, our children, our nuclear family, our family of origin, our extended family, and our family at work. Then, we think, we could really have some fun. But most of us do not separate from these multiple families. We stick “close to home” for the holidays, inevitably remembering Christmases and Hanukkahs and Kwanzas past. The holiday season is a time when we both celebrate our immediate family’s traditions, and model these traditions for our children, so that the next generation will have these rituals to draw upon in developing their own identity. In these connections to the past, we all hope to forge a bridge to the future.

Our holiday traditions take many forms. Among the more formal customs, food takes on a particular importance around the holidays. We have certain meals, often intricate, made at only at this time of the year. Why? Because we want those in our family to know that they are loved. Furthermore, we feel compelled to do things that we do not do at any other time of the year. We also have elaborate ways that we gift each other, and share these also as tokens of love. We make time to spend together in large and small gatherings designed to strengthen bonds, and renew our commitments to those we care about whom we may not see as often as we would like. And we feel we must write to everyone one we know, updating them on all the important events in our lives in a family letter, and wishing them a Happy New Year.

Expectations of how we will act and how others will act toward us rise high during this time, making the possibility of disappointments and frustrations very real. The compression of all these activities into five to six weeks takes a toll on our emotional well-being, turning the holidays into a time for tremendous pressure for both counselors and their counselees. The heightened holiday pressure is particularly true for those in recovery who are parents, and those for whom the holidays bring back memories of painful times and dashed dreams.

For families with anyone in recovery, the questions ring: How to celebrate? How to give? How to make amends? How to make a fun holiday for their children?

Recovery is a time of healing for all family members, but most importantly, and most often forgotten, for the children, the next generation. As children are so often the focus of much of the holiday cheer, it is a good time to teach parenting and to help your counselees to establish new, healthier family traditions.

To take some of the pressure off this vulnerable group, it is important to return to basics. The basics of a Twelve Step recovery program provide the structure around which to build parenting efforts. Focusing on the wisdom found here will allow the counselor to not only guide their counselees, but also themselves, in dealing with this most wonderful and most awful time of the year — so that it may be a joyous celebration for everyone.

The following are the Twelve Steps adapted for parenting. Use these for yourself, share them with your counselees, and make this a happy holiday for both parents and children by giving them a guide for how to truly connect during this time, and after.

1. Admit powerlessness over your ability to protect your children from pain and become willing to surrender to your love and not to your control.
This holiday season, give your children the gift of your love. Realize that this does not mean that we have vacuumed-packed them and sealed them so that only those things which we deem positive can be let in. Rather allow your love to be what can get them over the rough spots that life gives all of us, particularly at holiday time.

2. Find hope in the belief that recovery is possible through faith and a willingness to work on yourself.
Realize that being in recovery, and working on yourself to change those things that negatively affected both you and them, is a powerful message you can send to your children. Having faith, modeling this, and working to improve yourself, is a gift that will last beyond the holiday season.

3. Reach out for help and acknowledge that you are not alone.
Bring the topic of parenting into your recovery groups. As you deal with the stress you feel as a parent, help others do this as well. Remember, in recovery we are creating new family, within the rooms, family that can enrich our lives, and the lives of our children.

4. Take stock in yourself as a parent.
Use the holiday time to do some Fourth Step work on yourself as a parent. What are your strengths, what are the areas that you and your children feel need some improvement? Ask yourself
• am I listening to what it is my children need?
• Am I spending enough time with my children?
•Am I the parent I want to be?

5. Learn to share your parenting issues with others without self-recrimination.
Speak to other parents about your parenting strategies. Often one of the secrets not shared is that we all struggle with how we parent. Not speaking about this can impede our recovery. So bring up what your concerns are, without “beating yourself up” because you are not yet the parent you want to be. Be gentle with yourself as you move toward your goals for yourself as a parent.

6. Become ready to change by giving up the demand to be perfect.
Realize that change doesn’t come in one step, it is a series of steps. Sometimes, in our desire to love our children, we feel we have to be perfect, or we are just “no good.” Realize that this gets in the way of making the changes you can make today. So let parenting be messy, as is the rest of life, and don’t try to be perfect, just try to be better.

7. Make conscious changes in your parenting by identifying specific strategies for healthy parenting.
Just like your personal recovery program involved making clear choices, allow your parenting to be the same. Identify what you would like to do differently and develop a plan for how you can do this. Remember that plans have steps, so be clear about what you want to do, understand the resources you will need, and just get started. It can even be fun, and it will be rewarding.

8. Take responsibility for the effect your parenting has had on your children and learn self-forgiveness.
Realizing that in the past you have not been the parent that you would have liked to be, can free you up to be that parent now. Accept the fact that you have said and done things that you now realize you should not have done. Understand that this was the disease at work, that yes, it hurt your children, but that now in recovery, you are becoming a different person, and that you can be a different parent. You need to forgive yourself for past actions.

9. Make amends to your children through healthy parenting without over-compensating.
There is sometimes a tendency, particularly, during the holidays, to try to be a Disney dad or mom, and buy your kids everything they want, to make up for what you may not been able to give them emotionally in the past. Please for you and for them, do not take this path. Being the best parent you can be right now is the best gift you can give your children. This is how we can truly make amends to our children, by holding ourselves to a higher standard as a parent than we were able to do in the past, and being today the best parent we can be.

10. Model being honest with yourself and your children and create acceptance in your family for imperfection.
Giving yourself and your children the ability to make a mistake is a powerful gift. Creating an atmosphere where a sincere “I’m sorry” is heard when it is said, can transform many painful moments into moments of learning, and of healing. Make this one of the gifts you give yourself and your children for the holidays. What to do? When you are stressed and trying to do too much and become short with your child, try stopping yourself and truly apologizing. Then take a moment to both explain to your child what is happening, and to check in with him/her and see how they are feeling. Finish this with a hug. Give your family the gift of both being able to be wrong and learning how to make it right. This new standard is a gift that will keep on giving.

11. Learn to accept your limits in life and find your true spiritual path while allowing your children theirs.
Realize that you are but one person, that you have limits, and that you have paths that can nurture you. The same is true for your children. You and your children need not be on the same path for recovery for you both to proceed. Give them the gift of space, particularly if they are teenagers, while you model your spiritual path.

12. Reach out to other parents in the spirit of giving and community.
Take the wisdom you are finding about parenting to other parents. Be a parent in recovery advocate, and help release other parents from the shame so many needlessly feel. Let this be the gift you give your new family, your recovery family, and yourself.

How these Twelve Steps work
After I finished a lecture at a recent conference, and almost everyone had left the room, a well-dressed woman slowly came walking toward me. I noticed that her eyes were full of tears. She had attended the seminar as a teacher, looking to learn more about helping youth who are disruptive in the classroom. Somewhere in the middle of the seminar, she began to listens as a parent, and as someone who was in recovery.

The woman was in anguish because she realized that she was working the steps in a way that may have been helping her, but not her 9-year-old daughter. She shared that she would put her daughter to bed by reading her a story, kissing her, and sometimes also for beating her in her bed when she was drunk. Crying, the woman said she had tried to make up for lost time by taking her daughter shopping frequently and buying her whatever she wanted.“ I just feel so bad for what I did,” she said. “I never imagined that just being me could be enough to counter the wrongs I have done.” And with that, she hugged me and walked away smiling through her tears.

I often think of her because she got it! She realized that her daughter needed her to be the best mother she could be, and she was determined to be just that.

This is what children in recovery need, a good enough parent, one that lives in the present, making the present the best it can be. This is what the true spirit of the holidays is all about, sharing gifts that you can give both yourself and those you counsel. C

Patricia O’Gorman, PhD, a psychologist in East Chatham, NY, is the Clinical Director of Berkshire Farm Center, a statewide child welfare agency and a noted national and international lecturer and consultant, known for her warm, funny and information-packed seminars. She may be reached at www.orgormandiaz.com.

Acknowledgement
"The 12 Steps for Successful Parenting for Families Affected by Addiction' excerpted from The Lowdown On Families Who Get High, pages 67-78. Copyright 2004, Child Welfare of America. Reproduced by special permission of the Child Welfare League of America, Washington, DC (http://www.cwla.org)

This article is published in Counselor,The Magazine for Addiction Professionals, December 2004, v.5, n.6, pp.40-42 .

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