Doped Up Babies?

After 8 years of being a parent, I am still amazed by the number of things there are to afraid of that I never thought about. I was watching a makeover show last night as I chilled out so I could go to sleep. The woman getting the makeover had been a drug addict and worse for many years before finally getting her act together at the age of 41. Her mother had had her at the age of 11 but she grew up in a foster home - relatively stable, it seems - but the parents were old enough for her to get away with telling people they were her grandparents. This girl had first started smoking weed at the age of 5.

Five.

F-I-V-E.

Can somebody tell me how the heck that happens and no one notices? Just a hypothetical. I know darn well how it happens but she was one year older than my daughter is now and she was smoking joints, people!

I quickly woke up, sat up, and shivered at the thought. It was truly a scary thought. The child in the room next to mine could be sneaking weed somewhere? Unlikely, I know, since she's never out of someone's presence for very long but it's possible and that is freaky. I know I have to talk to my 8-year-old about sexual issues. I know I have to dumb down the topic for my daughter. I know I have to talk to son about everything under the sun, frankly. But the idea of my five-year-old being capable of finding weed, learning to smoke it and then being able to hide it from me is more than I can bear. And since my child is brilliant and every generation is smarter than the last, you know it's not outside the realm of possibility this happens way more than we think or know.

Before children, I was oblivious and happy-go-lucky. When I was pregnant with Son, I had loads of anxieties suddenly plague and try to paralyze me. Then you have the kid and you snap out of it and get on with the business of life and raising them and taking it day by day figuring out how to incorporate all the life lessons you want to teach and issue all the warnings they need to heed.

Daughter is heading to kindergarten in August and I already had enough on my mind thinking about the bus driver not paying attention and dropping her AND her brother off at the wrong stop. Now I can add one more thing to my list of concerns regarding their generation.

I thought I was past all this worrying. I guess not.