Children of Alcoholics – COA

Children who are normal by birth with alcoholic parents also tend to go through problems of other kind. Very noticeable symptoms in these children include low self esteem, a helpless feeling, lack of confidence, feeling of guilt and loneliness, panic resulting from a fear of abandonment, mental depression, etc.

Children of alcoholics or the COAs are generally not very happy and vibrant like the other children. They constantly go through a complex whereby they feel whatever is happening is because of them. They face this feeling of guilt that the member in their family be it their mother or father is drinking because of something he did wrong.

These children go through unimaginable tension and lead a stress filled life. They may even exhibit symptoms of frequently crying without any reason, wetting their beds, and having nightmares.

These children tend to avoid company as much as possible and consequently try all the time to avoid going to school. They dread interacting with other children. Older children exhibit symptoms of being a perfectionist, being obsessed with hoarding money, being very self conscious and avoiding company of any kind.

This is because they are very conscious of their selves as they feel they are somehow different from normal people due to their situation at home. Their behavior sometimes even starts resembling their alcoholic member at home. Teenagers especially go through a very tough life. They develop various kinds of phobias and face torture throughout their lives.

School life is miserable for these children of alcoholics. They generally do not get to concentrate on their studies at home due to the tension filled atmosphere there. Due to their laid back attitude, these children do not get along very well or establish any kind of a relationship with their teachers and other children studying with them.

Children of alcoholics do not have the self confidence at any stage to express anything that they feel. Even if they lag behind in studies they do not have the confidence in approaching their teachers or other students for any kind of academic help. Hence they most often than not, fail in their studies and repeat years. Some of them even reach the stage where they are either sent out of school or drop out on their own.

One of the major problems faced by the COAs at home is the unpredictability of moods of their alcoholic parents. If both parents are alcoholics, then the children face a miserable and tension filled life, especially if they are alone and do not have a brother or a sister to fall back on.

These children do not know what to expect from the alcoholic parent and are always on the edge. Their behavior also becomes unstable and they start showing their insecurity by attracting attention to themselves.

They do this by getting into undesirable habits like stealing, playing traunt and fighting frequently with others. Because of the unpredictable nature of the moods of their parents, these children are unable to understand how they themselves are to behave in different circumstances.

Surveys have shown that almost thirty percent of women from unstable family environments have been drop outs at school and around twenty percent of the men from such families have dropped out of colleges.

COAs try to please their alcoholic parent by trying to get good grades in school, by trying to act in such a way that will make the parent happy always, etc. They do all this to avoid being a target of temper tantrums. They also tiptoe around the house in order not to wake up the parent who is sleeping under the influence of alcohol. These children are always going around with a feeling of guilt that the root cause of all the problems is themselves.

They are thus convinced that the parent is drinking so much only because he or she is not able to please them in some way. They also feel guilty for the fact that they are not able to help the alcoholic parent in giving up the habit.

These are the unhappy households which are breeding grounds for crimes like incest, domestic violence, etc and conditions like manic depressions, suicides, etc. Almost seventy five percent of the father daughter incest cases are due to the alcoholic tendencies of the parent.

These children who are victims of incest and molestation carry their guilt throughout their lives and for them consuming alcohol themselves become their only way of escape from their feelings. Such children normally end up as alcoholics. Children of alcoholics have to be necessarily given counseling and treated early in their lives if they are to be saved from a miserable existence throughout their lives.