What's the best strategy to avoid teens doing drugs? (ADHD, method, wife)

[parentologist]

First of all, if you drink and use drugs, they will. Model good behavior. Train them in achievement - encourage good school work, enrich their lives. Tell them about how drugs and alcoholism ruin lives. Do your best to have a happy, supportive home environment, along with talking openly with them about what makes a good life - no addictions, satisfying work, a good marriage. Have these talks often, before they reach adolescence. Once they hit puberty, they don't listen.

Well before they reach teen years, make sure that they are busy with healthy activities - sports, music, wherever their talents lie. When they're entering middle school, explain to them that we tend to do what our friends do - if our friends are working hard in school, sports, extracurriculars, then we will too. If our friends are smoking and drinking and doing drugs, then we will too, no matter how hard we try not to. Tell them to choose their friends carefully, before they hit middle school.

When they hit the age where other kids are using drugs, and if you have the SLIGHTEST suspicion that they are, tell them that there are privileges to be had for not going down the wrong path - freedom, driver's license, etc. And that there are consequences for going down the wrong path - no freedom at all, no privileges, constant supervision, and admission to a rehab psych hospital for potentially years at a time, if that is what it takes, but that you will not see them using drugs and alcohol in high school, and that if they choose to do it after they turn 18, they will be doing it on their own, with no support whatsoever from you. Explain to them the concept of "Trust but verify", meaning that if you have the slightest suspicion of drug activity, you will randomly drug test them (doctor's order of lab test for blood and urine drug screen) at random intervals, and that if they come up positive, it's straight into inpatient rehab. If it happens after rehab, it's inpatient psych hospital, and so on, until they're 18. If they use drugs in college, they're on their own, financially, after that. Keep up the "trust but verify" if necessary.

Do not be in denial about it, if they start to go down the wrong path. I'll never forget a parent who literally caught her 19 yr old son, for whom she was paying a HUGE amount for college, catching her son getting high on the back porch while he was home from college. I knew that he was getting drunk and high four nights a week at college, to the point that he couldn't do schoolwork, but I couldn't tell her. But I asked her, "Is it normal for the first time that a person gets high, for it to be alone at his parents' house?" She conceded that it wasn't, but STILL couldn't bring herself to believe that her son was a heavy drinker and drug user. She was blinded by her love for him. Don't be blinded by your love. SEE it when you see signs of drug use - attitude, plummeting grades, staying out a lot, being reclusive, and act on it - TEST the kid! And then force him into rehab, and close supervision (and support) for the rest of high school, and beyond.

[The Dissenter]

I would say sometimes instead of keeping them away from other family members who have struggles with drugs and alcohol, expose and illustrate to them to the struggles that those people have to go through because they made those choices off of one hit.

My own mother was very forthcoming about what drug and alcohol use caused to happen to people around her. The father of two of my cousins was murdered over a drug deal gone bad. My own father struggled with alcohol abuse and seeing that was devastating to both of our eyes. Another thing she did was have me work through the church with Teen Challenge which is for people recovering from drug and alcohol abuse and hearing them share the struggles with even the smallest things through and after recovery was eye opening.

[Coldjensens]

Originally Posted by ukrkoz

Move your children to a country that does not do drugs. It's that simple. Of course, cut them off from internet and Hollywood movies and anything else propagating drug use.

Since there is no such country, I was going to suggest taking them through ting glass to wonderland - then I remembered that book was the product of a drug trip by the author.



Maybe there is a fantasy world like that somewhere in the world of fiction

[Bridge781]

I think it’s fairly easy for parents to keep kids occupied with activities through high school but what happens when they go away to college? Or move away after college to their own place? That’s when drug use tends to happen, not necessarily in high school. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen in high school. For my self I didn’t drink at all until I got to college because I was curious and influenced by others. No one did drugs. I never had an interest in trying drugs. Not sure why some do.

[Ginge McFantaPants]

Originally Posted by The Dissenter

I would say sometimes instead of keeping them away from other family members who have struggles with drugs and alcohol, expose and illustrate to them to the struggles that those people have to go through because they made those choices off of one hit.

My own mother was very forthcoming about what drug and alcohol use caused to happen to people around her. The father of two of my cousins was murdered over a drug deal gone bad. My own father struggled with alcohol abuse and seeing that was devastating to both of our eyes. Another thing she did was have me work through the church with Teen Challenge which is for people recovering from drug and alcohol abuse and hearing them share the struggles with even the smallest things through and after recovery was eye opening.

^^This. I was the poster child for the Kid Most Likely to Use Drugs: family history of addiction, virtually no parental involvement or rules, a steady income. But other than smoking an occasional joint (still do, once per year), the biggest reason I didn’t really get involved with drugs was because of a school field trip to the county jail (and making the connection that soooo many of the inmates were there because of drug-related offenses) and see the path that some of classmates went down. Really, I had plans for the future and no safety net if I screwed it up, so that fear is what kept me in check.

[Three Wolves In Snow]

I'll tell you what worked with me when I was a kid. It was a movie. They showed it in school. We saw it twice, once was when I was pretty young, and once was when I was in high school. I may have forgotten the title of the movie, but I have never, ever forgotten the scene of the guy in his bathroom, on the floor, with blood and crap and white stuff coming out of his mouth after he ODed on drugs - I think it was heroin. It wasn't acting. It was real footage.

I won't forget the guy spitting up blood after taking acid.

Yeah, it was "in your face" and very real - and that's all it took. I never, EVER even had the desire to try out heroin, meth, cocaine, or whatever the hell else is out there that people do.

I didn't need "DARE" and "say 'no' to drugs" and speeches on campus or in the auditorium and pamphlets and stories of being homeless or jobless or losing everything - that movie was all that was needed to keep me far, far away from drugs.

[Nonesuch]

Originally Posted by Three Wolves In Snow

I won't forget the guy spitting up blood after taking acid.

That's exactly the kind of bogus scare tactic which backfires more often than it works.

[Three Wolves In Snow]

Originally Posted by Nonesuch

That's exactly the kind of bogus scare tactic which backfires more often than it works.

Maybe you should watch the movie before you insist you know.

[Nonesuch]

Originally Posted by Three Wolves In Snow

Maybe you should watch the movie before you insist you know.

Please, give the name of the movie and the release date.

Or maybe explain the mechanism by which a person would end up "spitting up blood" after taking LSD? Unless the scene was about battery acid (which nobody uses as an intoxicant), it was bogus scare tactics, not "very real", just realistic special effects.

[djsuperfly]

Originally Posted by silibran

Also, my kids had to get jobs, and make decent grades to be allowed to drive.

It was my HS workplace where I really got introduced to drinking and pot.