Children of Alcoholics Awareness Week

History of Children of Alcoholics Awareness Week

Children of Alcoholics Awareness Week, held every February, shines a light on the often-overlooked struggles faced by kids growing up with a parent struggling with alcohol addiction. It’s a time to raise awareness, offer support, and remind these children that they’re not alone. The week promotes understanding, encourages healing, and connects families with resources to break the cycle of addiction and build healthier futures.

How Parental Addiction Affects Children

Children who grow up with one or more parents struggling with addiction can often live with consequences that last beyond childhood. Their home lives can frequently be unpredictable, with disrupted routines and instability, leading to feelings of insecurity and anxiety. Additionally, parental addiction can impact children in other ways, including:

• Emotional neglect: A parent’s focus on their addiction can leave children feeling emotionally neglected, unseen, and unimportant. This can impact their self-esteem and ability to form healthy relationships.
• Increased risk of developing their problems: Children of people with a substance use disorder are statistically more likely to experience mental health challenges like depression or anxiety or to develop substance use disorders themselves.
• Confusion and guilt: Children may blame themselves for their parent’s addiction or struggle to understand the disease, leading to feelings of shame and isolation.

How to Observe Children of Alcoholics Week

During Children of Alcoholics Awareness Week, we’re given an opportunity to raise awareness, break the silence and stigma around addiction, and inspire action. This week is a time to recognize the challenges of children growing up in homes affected by alcohol addiction and offer them our understanding and support and help them heal.

Here are some ways you can get involved and make a difference.

Learn About Alcohol Use Disorder

There’s a common misconception that people who are addicted to alcohol can just stop drinking. Addiction is a complex disease that changes the brain, making it incredibly difficult to stop without help. Asking someone with an alcohol use disorder to stop drinking is like telling someone with a broken leg to “walk it off” — it won’t work.

However, that doesn’t mean all hope is lost. Tens of thousands of people find recovery every year. With the right treatment and support, long-term recovery is absolutely possible. Just like a broken leg needs a cast and rehabilitation to heal properly, someone with an alcohol addiction needs help to overcome the challenges of withdrawal, cravings, and the underlying causes of their addiction. Understanding that addiction is a treatable disease, not a moral failing, can go a long way towards helping a parent get the help they need—and their children the childhood they deserve.

Show Support

Kids living with a parent in active addiction deal with a complex set of emotions and circumstances that they often don’t have the coping skills to handle. Frequently, these children take on caretaker roles to their parents, siblings, or even the household itself, leading to a loss of their childhood and potential long-term emotional and psychological difficulties. They may experience feelings of guilt, shame, confusion, and fear. They may struggle with low self-esteem and difficulty forming healthy relationships.

Offering what support you can is essential to let them know they are not alone, their parent’s addiction is not their fault, and that there is support for them, too. A lifeline in the storm of addiction can make all the difference in the lives of children living with a parent struggling with addiction.

Break The Stigma

Shame often goes hand-in-hand with addiction because there is a great deal of stigma surrounding the disease. Children of addicted parents feel this shame, too, internalizing the negative messages they’ve heard about addiction, which can result in their not reaching out for help when they need it. They may also fear judgment from others or worry about the consequences of disclosing their family’s struggles.

Breaking down the stigma surrounding addiction and creating safe spaces for children of alcoholics to share their experiences is crucial in helping them access support and begin their own healing journey. Ways you can help break the stigma include:

Create a safe space for open and honest communication.

• Be honest about family history of addiction and mental health disorders.
• Explain what addiction is (using age-appropriate language).
• Correct misconceptions about addiction.
• Connect kids with resources, like Ala-Teen or age-appropriate books.
• Counter negative messages, focus on strengths, and promote positive self-talk.
• Build a support network.

Access Helpful Resources and Share Information

It can be difficult to know how to help a child dealing with a parent’s addiction. Luckily, there are a number of great resources out there. Websites like the National Association for Children of Addiction (NACoA) offer advice and support. You can also find books and pamphlets written just for kids with addicted parents. Sharing this information with the child in an age-appropriate way can help them understand they’re not alone and that it’s not their fault.

Help a Parent Struggling with Addiction to Get Help

Helping a parent you know struggling with addiction can feel overwhelming. Still, your concern and support can make a significant difference to a child in their lives. If you’re not sure where to start, here are some tips:

• Start by expressing your concerns with empathy and compassion, focusing on specific behaviors and how they impact you and the family.
• Avoid blame and judgment.
• Research local treatment options, including therapy, support groups, and rehabilitation centers, and offer to help them find resources or accompany them to appointments.
• Encourage them to talk to a healthcare professional or counselor.

Take the First Step to a Healthier Family

Shame often keeps parents struggling with addiction trapped in a cycle of substance use. But the truth is, seeking help for alcohol addiction is an act of courage—and a testament to the love you have for your child. If you are a parent struggling with drug or alcohol addiction, there is effective help that can get you on the road to recovery so you can give your child the healthy, happy parent they deserve.

Call us today at to learn about your treatment options, including outpatient treatment options that can help you balance recovery and parenthood. Our admissions navigators are on hand to answer your questions, help you verify your insurance, review other payment options, and guide you toward healing. Hope is waiting, so reach out!