Now hold on, don’t take offense. If there can be books on computers, bird-watching, and building a shelf “for dummies” then there certainly ought to be one for parenting. It’s not that people are dumb. It’s just that sometimes, with something new, it’s best to have a guide that is very specific and that assumes that the reader doesn’t know anything about the subject yet. For instance, in dealing with an absolute beginner on the computer, one doesn’t start throwing around terms like “cursor” and “tool bar” because the student will not know what they are.
This article isn’t actually about the book of that name which you can actually buy new or used on Amazon.com. It’s about a podcast from Iowa University in early August 2011 from their section called Science of Parenting: Teen Drug and Alcohol Use, Abuse.
Unfortunately, the usage of marijuana is up, and the usage of ecstasy also. It’s also acceptable to the teens’ peers to go out and get drunk on a Friday night. So it is still and perhaps now more important for parents to figure out how they are going to deal with this.
The first step is to find out what is going on. Kids do lie, and sometimes parents lie about how they acted back when they were in high school. It’s not a good idea. If you want to foster a good communication with them, it’s better to be upfront, even if not going into all the gory details.
Peter Komendownski, president of Partnership for a Drug Free Iowa and Face It Together says, “No matter how easy it is to tell parents to talk to their children, there isn’t a real set of rules that makes it easy for that engagement to happen in a constructive way.”
Just because parents talk to their kids once or twice about the problem and their child sounds like he is on board with avoiding it – doesn’t mean that the kid really is.
Parents really need to spend a lot of time with their kids, not just talk to them here and there. If there isn’t a real connection of love and delight and respect and learning between them, then there will not be a reason for the teen to want to stay clean. If the teen only finds acceptance and fun with his peers and not at home, then his peers will have the major influence on his decisions.
Komendowski said, “Parents that successfully engage their children in discussion about drugs and alcohol use effect a very significant reduction in abuse by those children.”
