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Addicts' children born to cry

They are paying high price for the sins of their parents

[[Image - photograph of a child, caption below]]
CLARENCE DAVID DAILY NEWS
Rafael, 10 months old, peeks from his crib in Hale House in Harlem.

THEY COME into the world with a monkey on their back—hooked on the chemical substances their mothers take, premature, underweight and more prone to infant death and illness than normal babies.
For the first few weeks of their lives, the infants' legs and back and arms are stiff, they suffer from diarrhea and vomit frequently, their discomfort sometimes causes them to carve bloody scratches in their faces and they cry incessantly—the only way they can express their need for drugs.
Health officials estimate 1,300 babies a year are born addicted to drugs. But there may be as many as 500,000 children in New York State being raised in homes where a parent is a heavy drug abuser.
For all the medical literature on drug addiction and all the millions of dollars spent on drug treatment and prevention, experts agree that very little attention has been focused on the children—either those born into drug addiction or those reared in families where the parent becomes an addict.

SOME OF THEM can be seen toting the family's shopping and laundry because their mother is too stoned to handle it; or congregating on street corners while their mother is out hooking to raise money for her habit; or hanging out with their parents in front of methadone distribution centers, or sitting in waiting rooms while their mothers meet with their drug counselors.
"You can see them standing with their parents on a corner waiting for their drugs," said Clara Hale, who founded Hale House in Harlem for children of drug abusers. "The kids stand still and they watch everything their parents do."
Despite the obvious risks to children raised in families that focus around getting mommy or daddy's next fix—whether it's heroin, legal or street methadone, amphetamines or barbiturates—there are virtually no services geared toward these children, state officials agree.
"There is absolutely no literature on this," said Deidre Breslin, a member of the Children's Task Force, formed by Julio Martinez, director of the state's Division of Substance Abuse Services. "It's as if these children don't exist."
Neither are there services geared to the parent, who is bearing a double burden of handling the drug habit as well as trying to care for a child.

ONLY ONE program in the state, the New York Medical College Pregnant Addicts and Addicted Mothers Program (PAAM) near Mount Sinai Hospital, targets this population for health, counseling and supervision services.
Only Hale House takes these children in after birth, cares for them through the withdrawal process and raises them until their mothers complete a drug-treatment program—or simply decide they are ready to take their children back.
Except for a few scattered treatment centers that offer family counseling or other programs for children, there is nothing else, officials said.
In contrast, libraries of books, articles and films and layers of counseling, treatment and support services have addressed the problems of the children of alcoholics—while the children of drug addicts remain trapped by the stigmas of drugs and poverty, health officials said.
As the heroin epidemic continues, the number of women heroin addicts increases every year, and officials estimate that there are 300,000 women using heroin and other drugs who are of childbearing age in New York State.

CITY HEALTH statistics showed that infants born to narcotics-addicted mothers had a significantly higher mortality rate than those in the general population. According to statistics compiled from 1979-1981, 46.3 out of every 1,000 live births to drug-addicted mothers end in death each year, compared with 16.1 of every 1,000 infants in the general population.

And a new deadly risk to children of drug addicts has been detected in recent years: AIDS. At least 14 babies in New York City appear to have fallen victim to acquired immune deficiency syndrome, "acquired" from their mothers during pregnancy. In most cases, the mothers are found to have signs of immune deficiency themselves, but not all have fully developed AIDS.
For the children born into drug addition and those raised in families of addicts, growing up often is marked by child abuse, neglect and malnutrition. According to a "very rough estimate" by officials from the city's Special Services for Children, 6% of the 19,834 children in foster care were placed there primarily because their parents were drug abusers.

"I THINK if there are any telltale signs...especially of children of heroin addicts, it will be health problems," said Michael Carter, who runs a state-funded prevention program in schools in southeast Queens. "We find, for example, a significant weight loss or inability to gain weight because that child is not being properly cared for because all the energy in that home is on getting that next fix."
There are also behavioral and developmental problems that plague the children of drug abusers. In a study of 138 older children of addicts, Lorraine Hale, director of Hale House and daughter of the founder, found that the children showed signs of restricted development, poor motor skills, limited concentration, short attention span and little patience for details. Most, she said, did poorly in school, even though they appeared bright, clever and "cute."
Also, across the board, drug-abusing parents report that their children appear more active than other children, said Fred Suffet, evaluation director for the PAAM program. Increasingly, he said, there are clues that this inability to "inhibit motor activity" may be especially prevalent in children born into drug addiction—"maybe some kind of neuro-chemical effect," he said.

NO STUDY has been done on whether children of drug addicts may be prone to other antisocial behavior—such as drug addiction. But many officials said that if there are not neuro-chemical reasons for children of drug addicts to become drug addicts, there certainly are plenty of environmental reasons.
Carter said work with junior high school students shows that many of those using drugs had parents who smoked pot in the home, drank, or used harder drugs. "It becomes for the youngster a sanction to try it," he said.
In fact, Carter said, he is certain that "New York City has a multigenerational drug problem."

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