Coroner Vanita Hullander on parenting, drugs, laws and culture
Catoosa County Coroner Vanita Hullander has been involved with Teen Maze, an annual large-scale network of experiences to help teens see the potential consequences of making poor choices, for seven years. Last month, 1,500 sophomores from four counties attended the event at The Colonnade in Ringgold.
One station in the maze invited students to post on a special wall things they would change about their lives if they could. “So many notes,” says Hullander, “said ‘I wish my parents wouldn’t drink,’ ‘I wish there weren’t drugs in my house,’ ‘I wish my parents would pay more attention to me,’ and ‘I’m thinking about suicide. Please help me.’”
“We’re facing a crisis today like we’ve never seen before,” says Hullander, who has also worked as an EMT and in emergency rooms. “And children are suffering the most.”
“The reason God brings us into the world as babies is because there’s someone bigger than us who should be guiding, teaching and correcting us.” That someone is a parent says Hullander, and she believes that a large part of the crisis is parents who are steeped in substance abuse, addicted to their phones and devices or emotionally absent from parenting.
But the problem is more complex than that, Hullander says. While parents are the ultimate people in their children’s lives and the ones from whom children should be able learn how to live, there’s plenty of blame to go around.
“We promote destruction in our country now,” says Hullander. “The national media is the greatest threat to our ability to heal. They are dismantling our country by sensationalizing everything and promoting confusion and despair. It’s not profitable to the media for people to heal.”
Hullander says a classic warfare strategy is to divide people, then use the confusion to conquer. “The confusion maker has all the power.”
“No one knows what their roles are anymore. They don’t know what their responsibilities are. Parents are afraid to correct their children. Legislatures are afraid to limit violent media and dangerous drugs. Everyone is walking on eggshells, afraid they’ll do or say the wrong thing, so they do nothing. The people with the most to gain — financially or in the way of status or power — are the ones most likely to try to keep others confused and helpless.”
“We’re three generations into this. For too many kids today, substance abuse, violence, broken relationships and irresponsibility are the new normal. It’s all they know. It’s what they see at home, online, on TV. They think it’s supposed to be this way.”
“Children are starved for attention and guidance from their parents,” says Hullander, “for a strong family life and adults who are part of the solution, not the problem.”
“When I worked in an emergency room,” says Hullander, “fourteen and fifteen year old girls would come in miscarrying and heartbroken, because they desperately wanted that baby because they thought it would bring them the love they didn’t get from their parents.”
On substance abuse, Hullander says, “Many parents introduce their kids to drugs and alcohol. In even more cases, parents and grandparents simply make drugs available to kids by keeping them where they’re easily accessible. Parents today say, ‘Go get me my Valium.’ The kids know where it is, they get it and take some themselves. Their parents think nothing of taking drugs openly, so why should the kids?”
Hullander is also concerned about prescribing drugs for children. “We need to stop labeling and medicating our children for acting like children. Kids have no choice. Adults can’t be bothered helping them work through the normal challenges of growing up, so they drug them and the kids come to think that it’s normal to take drugs to solve problems.”
On lawmakers: “Legislators like to talk about how concerned they are but they don’t want to stick their necks on the chopping block for the good of society. They somehow think they’ve done their job by saying there’s a problem. Too many of them bow to the drug industry or other special interests. Some just don’t have a backbone. Some are blind to the dangers. Some think the answer is to lock more people up.”
“When you have a whole society that’s dysfunctional,” says Hullander, “incarceration is not the solution. Some people need to be in jail, but most need help.
“They need laws that protect them and programs that help them recover and learn how to be functional, healthy members of society again.”
Hullander, who teaches substance abuse classes, would like to see prescription drug laws in Georgia like the ones in Tennessee that have rescheduled numerous drugs to more severe categories and strictly limit what drugs can be prescribed for and the duration of prescriptions. “We need to stop the addiction before it starts. Substance abuse destroys at so many levels — it sets the scene for ruined marriages, families and childhoods far into the future. It leaves people homeless, sick and hopeless. It hurts our economy and puts our freedom at risk. We can’t run from this problem anymore.”
“We need to face the truth about why people become addicts,” Hullander says. “No one wakes up one day and says “I want to be an addict.’ Maybe they were abused or neglected as children or bullied at school. Maybe they’ve had no support system and see no purpose to their life. Addiction can become a purpose — it’s always there, always calling to you. You have a family in other addicts and your dealer. It’s a society unto itself. We must face the human need to belong, to have a purpose, and find ways to help those who have fallen into the destructive society of substance abuse. Locking people up will not solve the problem.”
Is there really a solution to all the dysfunction, both substance-induced and otherwise? Hullander admits it’s a long road that will involve many people working together — schools, churches, social service agencies, courts, government and — a long shot — the media. But she returns again and again to what she considers most important: parents as examples, nurturers and authorities in their children’s lives.
“I’m not an expert on parenting,” Hullander says, “but I do know what we’re doing in this country is not working. I know that children desperately need their parents to step up to the plate and take responsibility and set limits and act like adults. And that’s something that can start right now.”
“We need a lot of things — better laws, good rehabilitation, parenting classes, support systems. But there are thousands of children right here in our area who need their parents today. Parents may need help. That’s okay — they should ask for it. There are plenty of us out here who are there for them. But children can’t be put on hold while we try to get all this right and while we battle the forces that don’t care if it’s right. Kids need their parents today.”
“We need to become a nation of people who fix problems and help everyone learn to make better choices,” says Hullander. “We have to take responsibility — all of us who can need to help those who are struggling — first, by not contributing to their problems and second, by offering solutions and healing.”