“Mom, Dad, did you ever…?”

Did you ever get high? Did you ever drink at parties? Did you ever skip class to share a joint? Did you ever smoke pot?

These probably aren’t questions you want to hear from your kids, especially if the answer is yes. It’s an important part of a larger conversation, though. In that sense, these awkward questions are a gift.

Your answers matter a lot, it turns out, and honesty isn’t necessarily the best policy. The New York Times offers an insightful essay this week about how doctors, and the parents they work with, can talk to kids about drugs in a safe, productive way.

Don’t lie to your kids about your own drug use, past or present. When the truth comes out (and it probably will), they’ll feel betrayed. Plus, you’ll have set the example that you should lie to each other about drug use. Which is NOT what you want your teen doing.

Don’t assume you have to pour out the whole sordid story of every lost weekend to them either. Figuring out what your kids are really asking is a key part of having a good conversation with them. Do they want to know what you did? What you think they should do? How to get past a drug problem they’ve been hiding? How to say no to pressure from friends? Use their questions about your drug use as a starting point to find out more about what’s going on in your kid’s life.

It’s important not to brush off adolescent experimentation with drugs as normal or inevitable. There’s research available now that just didn’t exist when our parents were sheparding us through these waters, and it all points towards teen drug use being more serious than we might have guessed.

Teenagers who use drugs are more likely to develop lifelong substance abuse problems than those who wait till adulthood to try things out (or better yet, never use drugs). Additionally, we now know that the brain is still developing into our mid-20s. A 16-year-old smoking dope is permanently affecting how her mind works.

My own parents were pretty laid back about marijuana. They expected me to smoke pot because that was the norm for their crowd growing up in the 60s. I’ve taken a very different approach with my teen, who I hope and believe is not smoking anything.

When I talk to my teenager about drug use, I’m open about the fact that I used drugs in high school and college. I also make it clear that using drugs was a bad choice, one that caused lasting problems for me.

By counter-example, we’ve talked about friends of ours who did not use drugs. For the most part, these friends had more academic and professional success, and a smoother transition into adulthood. I let him know that’s the life I want for him: one in which he can excel at anything he wants to do, without losing time, energy and opportunities to drugs.

The bottom line in our household: drugs may or may not cause problems for any given individual, but we always have something better to do than get high.

I was delighted to see this sentiment echoed in the New York Times piece as a bit of closing advice to parents:

Tell your child, in Dr. Simkin’s words, that “I would prefer you to work on finding your passion, finding what in life you want to do” — and celebrate that potential.

And for that very reason, Dr. Williams said, “I would like them to have every brain cell they can have.”

While getting the message across in the right way is crucial, don’t let fear of saying the wrong thing stop you from talking to your teen about these issues at all. I often wish I’d talked about drugs more with my parents when I was an adolescent, and I do my best to keep that conversation going with my kids now.

Photo: R. Mannie

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