Not My Kid: Keeping your children off of drugs

BOSTON (FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) - “An amazing, smart young man, and all along he was leading another life that we weren’t aware of,” Debbie Moak, like so many parents, thought she knew her son. “When your kid is successful in athletics, successful academically, successful in responsibility, in other areas of your life, those are what loving parent eyes see. They distort the reality,” Moak says. She realized one of her sons was doing drugs, and only after a home drug test did she realize how big the problem actually was. “He told us he had smoked one time. That test came back with THC levels so high, meaning he was smoking before school, during school, and after school. All the time. So we were already facing a big problem, but still didn’t know it,” Moak says.

‘Not My Kid’ , it’s what many parents have said, and is fittingly the name of Moak’s organization. Ten years after her son’s battle with drugs, she’s trying to educated everyone about substance abuse in kids. “We founded ‘Not My Kid’ because unfortunately, we were the typical family, we have two sons doing everything on paper you want your kids to do,” Moak says.

But if your child was using drugs, you’d know it, right? You’d find evidence in their bedroom, somewhere in the house. Rick Borom, the education director of ‘Not My Kid’ , says think again, as he displays a number of normal everyday items that are decoys for a hidden drug stash. Borom says parents need to realize just what is out there, “the average age kids begin experimentation is 13, and the average length of time that kids use before being discovered by a responsible adult is two years. That’s a huge amount of time,” Borom says. Though it may sound extreme, Borom actually suggests parents drug test their kids at age 12, giving your children an excuse when someone tries to offer them drugs. “We literally train parents to train their kids to use them and say, ‘my mother’s crazy, she drug tests me,” Borom says.

Debbie Moak says she live it and wants to help other parents, so they don’t have to, “If you’re dependent upon your eyes, ears, and your senses to tell you whether or not your kids are using drugs, you will miss it. That’s what I want parents to know.”