Ouders onder invloed en kinderen onder invloed van ouders : een kwalitatief onderzoek naar de problematiek van kinderen van verslaafde ouders

For every person who is addicted to alcohol or drugs, an estimated four others are directly influenced. For a long time there was little or no attention for the consequences of the alcohol- and drugabuse of parents for the development of their growing children. There are no consistent findings about the risks for children of addicted parents. To get a clearer image of this, the goal of this research is to map out the risks that children of addicted parents who are client at Tactus Verslavingszorg have. Semi-structured interviews are held with 18 children and 11 parents.Common problems that the children in this research show are: drawing attention, agressive behaviour and concentrationproblems. They express little feelings, they have confidence problems and experience feelings of guilt and shame. A lot of children have a distorted relationship with their addicted parent. Common physical problems are sleeping problems and wetting their beds. Discussion: Children of addicted parents are difficult to reach. If future research is possible, it’s sensible to compare children of addicted parents with a control group of children without addicted parents or with children with divorced parents without addiction problems.