Sad, sad story from Katie Allison Granju, a well-known proponent of attachment parenting. Excerpt:

This wasn’t the first time I’ve been concerned about what people would think if they found out. In fact, I’ve been worried about what would happen if our family’s terrible secret “got out” – that my son suffers from a life threatening drug addiction – for several years now. I mean, some people DID know – the people closest to us. And as someone who has been writing essays and blogging about her family life for many years, I had alluded to the issue obliquely here and there since about 2008 – so I am sure some readers had their suspicions. However, until this week, until H overdosed and ended up on life support in the ICU, I had never said it clearly, proactively,without obfuscation or minimizing.
But I am saying it now, out loud, in public, for the first time: I am the mother of a drug addict.

For the record, we have practiced attachment parenting in our family, and have been pleased with it. I’m sure some people will say, “See, attachment parenting doesn’t work!” I think that the real lesson here is that there are no guarantees in anything you do as a parent. The best you can do is better your odds, but ultimately, children have free will. I personally know people from massively screwed up families who turned out great, and vice versa. That’s not to say, though, that it’s entirely a crapshoot. Granju does fault herself for not taking her son’s early experimentation with drugs a lot more seriously than she did.

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