How to explain drug addiction to a pre-schooler?

You call it "poor choices".

Eventually you can take them to an Al-Anon meeting.

Great book to help you (and them eventually) understand:

http://www.amazon.com/Addictive-Personality-Unders...

Explain Drug Addiction

I agree with the answerers who say keep it simple and age appropriate. Drug addiction is too complex an issue for a 5 year old to understand.

Since you've made a presidency by saying her parents were sick, I would suggest following up with telling her that there are different types of sicknesses. Some sickness - like a cold or the sniffles are easy to fix. You take a medicine a doctor gives you, and rest then in a few days you feel better. But there are some illnesses that a person might have for their whole life. I would add that her parents' illness made it too hard for them to be able to care for her properly but that they loved her very much and want her to have a good life.

But I also think its important to ask her open ended questions so that you can get a better idea of what's going on in her head. Perhaps she's fearful when she sees you with a cold that you will get "too sick" to take care of her and then her and her sister will have to leave your home too. Perhaps she's fearful she'll get sick like her first parents and worries that she will have to leave, or won't be able to go to school etc.

5 year olds think way more then most people give them credit for, but at the same time, they don't have the life experiences to follow traditional thought patterns so there's no way to know what she could be thinking and believing without talking with her.

If it were me, I would keep the focus of the conversation on the fact that they loved her a lot, and that they want her to have a good life.

EDIT:

I just read your additional comment about not wanting so paint it as a selfless act. I completely agree with that. However, its been proven that people under the influence have flawed thinking, so even though they did awful things that hurt the children, it doesn't mean that they didn't love them, or that they didn't want them to have a good life. Most people's "intentions" is for their children to have a good life even if they don't know how to provide it or simple can't, or even if their actions say something completely different.

I think the fact that they were removed is a seperate issue to be dealt with when the kids are older and better able to understand complex issues.

At your daughter's current level of development she's in a very ego-centric stage where she can twist whatever you say to be her fault. You don't want her to spend the next 10 years believing she wasn't good enough - which was why she had to leave their home, or that she caused their problems. (most kids will come to this conclusion at that age) That's why I personally think for now its important for your children to feel loved, so that's why I recommend putting the focus there.

Just my thoughts

Sickness is not always the best way to describe it..because remember you get sick as well. You get colds, tummy bugs, headaches. If your daughter thinks the reason she was removed is because her parents were sick..then you get sick. See where i'm going with that? She could be very scared of you getting ill, or of being sick herself

I would explain it in terms of medicine. Some is good, the doctor gives it to you. If you take bad medicine the doctor didn't give you, then it makes you feel very ill and you feel you have to take it all the time. And you make poor choices because of that. And those poor choices led to her being taken away. But that won't happen to you, because you don't take bad medicine. etc etc

I am a recovering drug addict-- 8 yrs clean. I have a daughter who is 14 now& her father is still a full blown addict who she hardly ever sees. I have always explained drug addicttion as an illness that makes people do things they wouldnt normally do. This illness makes makes them live a hard life& that some people are able to beat this illness bit some people cannot. I wouldnt get too much into detail& i would NEVER call their parents" crackheads". Good luck& God bless u for giving these children a home& a healthy family. :)

Haven't finished reading all the answers 'cause now gotta go do dinner, but I like Rosie's analogy of trying to give up thumb-sucking, etc. 'cause it's putting it into ways a kid's likely to understand.

I don't agree with not telling them about drugs though - even at such a young age, they STILL need to be aware of such things (Daughter had an 8yr old friend stabbed with a HIV+ positive needle and the entire school 'suddenly' discovered they needed to talk about drugs 'cause of the needles being left lying around the school grounds).

Kids do need to know these things because you (any and all parents, biological or otherwise) have no idea what they're actually up to when they're out from under your care.

Good luck hun!

Don't explain drug addiction to a little five year old.

Keep it appropriate to her age, a full blown explanation will just confuse her, and we all know kids like to blurt out information, do you really want to her tell the checkout assistant at the supermarket that "mummy does drugs so I can't see her!"?

Keep it simple, don't overwhelm her, and don't tell her anything a normal five year old shouldn't know. She will appreciate being able to be a kid when she is older.

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first off you people suck, nice way to talk about children. To the parent I think that you should only give her as much information as she needs being a 5 year old little girl when she asks why her parents are sick and couldn't take care of her just let her know that they realized that they were not able or capable of taking care of her and wanted her to have a good life. Until she's old enough to know the true story this is all she needs to know, that's just my opinion i hope it helped and don't listen to these idiots

This is how I explain it to children, of preschool age, using the medicine metaphor. We'd had a teacher led discussion of drug abuse in our son's preschool classrooms.

Taking medicine that the doctor doesn't give you to take makes you very sick and if you keep taking it it makes you even sicker till you are sick all the time.

Then because you are sick, you keep taking these chemicals to make yourself feel better, but it just makes you more sick.

The only way to fix it is to get help and never take the chemicals again. This is a very hard thing to do, like giving up a pacifier or sucking your thumb only much much worse.

The rules are if the police find out that you take these pills and medicines without permission, that you are told to stop, because it's against the law, and if you can't stop doing it, you get into trouble with the police and the judges.

she was sick

she had bad behavior

she had a bug in her that made her do bad things

et al...

kids are concrete. using terminology like "addicted" and "illicit" and "not prescribed by a doctor" will garner you glazed eyes.

and by ALL means, don't "label her" ( eg. she was a drug addict, crackhead, et al).

the truth, anything can be explained if it's age-appropriate.