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No one likes airing their dirty laundry, but this is the perfect place. There’s no room for embarrassment or shame here. One person’s mistake or misfortune can be another’s salvation.

Take for instance the story of a father I recently interviewed regarding his son’s decent into addiction. Mikes son was only nineteen, and he had recently withdrawn from college in order to attend rehabilitation for alcoholism. Though this story is not unique in any way, it was very troubling for Mike and his family. He began to regret everything from Monday night football, to Fourth of July celebrations to high school parties hosted at his house.

Each of these occasions included what Mike believed to be a harmless and normal amount of alcohol. Thinking back, Mike recognized that alcohol had become a part of nearly every social occasion hosted at the house. He had let his son drink small amounts of wine at the dinner table, share cans of beer on Sundays and get mildly drunk at parties.

Once or twice, the kid had gotten more than mildly drunk, but Mike assumed that his son had learned all that he needed to from the vomit and subsequent hangover. By the time his son was seventeen, Mike knew that he was drinking regularly. His son openly spoke about getting drunk on the weekends. “At the time,” Mike admitted, “I thought it was a good thing that he felt comfortable sharing that with us.” Looking back, however, Mike realized that he had missed a number of opportunities to take his son’s behavior more seriously.

Rather than forbidding alcohol use altogether, he chose to focus on drunk driving, and warned about practicing safe sex. He shared a few of his own college-aged drinking stories, and chalked his son’s drinking up to “normal” practice. By the time he was about to leave for college, Mike’s son openly drank with his friends while hanging out in the home. Most often, it was Mike’s beer that they were drinking.

After leaving for college, Mike’s son skipped into overdrive. What little supervision he had in the home, was not gone. He viewed his drinking as an essential and indispensable aspect of social life. Rather than drinking on the weekends, he began drinking four to five nights a week. Soon, he was drinking every night. A few beers, turned into six beers. He was often drunk in the daytime, sometimes in class. Other classes, he slept through because of the night before. With just a few credits under his belt, Mike’s academics crumbled.

Tuition wasted. Achievement delayed. Bad habits reinforced and health diminished, Mike’s son returned home to find a job. The heavy drinking continued, however, making it impossible to keep steady work. One night, the police called for Mike to meet them at the hospital. His son had crashed the family car while driving some friends home from a party.

Seeing his son with cuts and bruises was nothing compared to the pain he felt knowing that his “little boy” had turned out this way. Little more than 18 months earlier, he and his pal had sat on the back deck -sharing a cold one together- imaging what it would be like as college graduation, marriage and children blended into their lives. Now, as Mike looked forward to a life of addiction for his son, he couldn’t help but look back on his own mistakes.

There are few things as poignant as looking into another father’s eyes while he laments his own experience as a parent. I wish it on no one. In my interview with him, I asked this Dad in distress what he thought I should title the piece. “Don’t Be Like Mike,” he joked. Instead, I thought, “Be Like Mike,” just beat him to it. Rather than wait for heartache, consider how your own actions might influence the future of your child, and what signs may be giving you precious early warning of what may be on their horizon. There’s time to fix the future, to correct our mistakes. We just have to be willing to see the signs.