Lea Grover, mom of three, wrote in an essay that smoking marijuana makes her a better mom.
She tells
When the stress of parenting gets to be too much, some moms meditate, others may lock themselves in the bathroom as a quick escape. In a new essay, one mom says her best method for reducing parental-induced anxiety is getting high.
In an essay posted on Cosmopolitan last week, mom of three Lea Grover writes that when the going gets especially tough at home, smoking small amounts of marijuana helps her empathize with her children and makes her a better mom. “With marijuana, I have more patience. I’m slower to get angry or frustrated, because I understand their frustrations. I am able to see the world through their eyes, to remember how hard it is to be a preschooler or toddler, how things that seem obvious to me aren’t yet known to them. We all have a better day,” she writes. “When my kids are bickering for the 15th time in as many minutes, I can disappear for 30 seconds, come back a bit high, and mediate calmly — with a smile, no less.”
But while her essay, which has been shared more than 10,000 times since it was posted on July 14, has caused controversy, Grover tells Yahoo Parenting that there’s more to her story than people realize. “When I first self-medicated, I was taking night classes to finish my degree and my husband was hiding his brain cancer from his employer, afraid of being laid off during the recession,” she confesses. “He’s recovering from a recurrence now, and being nagged to refill a bowl of crackers for 12 minutes can be more stressful than being told to wait on hold with a hospital for two hours.”
She also adds, “I’ve suffered from different forms of anxiety most of my life, including PTSD. I do have a prescription for Xanax, but Xanax makes me so tired I run the risk of sleeping instead of parenting.”
Grover wrote in Cosmo that she is able to have a bit more fun with her daughters — 5-year-old twins and a 3-year-old — after smoking pot, too. “I say yes to more requests for childhood fun. To baking cookies, craft projects, trips to the park, board games, fashion shows … any of the things that under normal circumstances make my shoulders tense up as I contemplate inevitable messes and tantrums,” she writes. “When I’m a little stoned, there are no fights. My catch phrase goes from ‘Thirty-second time out for everyone’ to ‘Let’s all take a deep breath and count to four.’”
In her piece, Grover states that she doesn’t drive her children anywhere when stoned, she doesn’t smoke in front of her kids, and she avoids “relying on marijuana.” She says she plans to never smoke with her children, even when they are much older.
Parenting expert and family physician Dr. Deborah Gilboa says Grover’s essay makes a compelling and rational argument for her getting high, and says she wouldn’t dispute that Grover is accurately portraying her experience. Still, Gilboa says there are potential problems that the mom isn’t taking into account. “My biggest safety concern here is that we know marijuana delays reaction time and makes you less coordinated,” Gilboa tells Yahoo Parenting. “When you are taking care of kids, sometimes reaction time and coordination really matter. Catching them as they tumble down the stairs or stopping them from reaching for the hot stove — those are very real examples. Or sometimes, something unexpected happens and you have to jump in the car and bring your kids to the ER, and you don’t have time to sober up, from drugs or alcohol. Parenting is such an unpredictable job that there is significant risk in limiting your reaction time and your coordination.”
And while Grover says she doesn’t get high in front of her children, Gilboa says it’s unlikely that her kids will remain oblivious to their mom’s habit. “We all learn things about our parents that they didn’t want us to know,” she says. “Maybe her 3-year-old doesn’t know now, but when she’s an 8-year-old? Or a 15-year-old? Parenting doesn’t get less anxiety-inducing, so I would want her to find a better coping mechanism that she could model for her children.
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