Realistically keeping teens away from drugs, smoking and alcohol?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think a lot of this ends up being friend group related. If your kids friends are doing it, your kid is likely doing it too.

Absolutely
Lots of achiever kids experiment a lot

Ivy League kids who don't have adhd take adderall to enhance performance
Asked around. True

https://youthneuro.org/journal/article/939/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A happy, functional, socially involved, financially secure family life.

Parents in good and functional marriage with no addiction, abuse or adultery

Kids in rigorous academic programs with EC and service commitments. Kids with outside enrichment and academic support..

Be present for your kids and be clued in about their day to day life.

Keep an eye on the company they keep.

Keep them off social media.

Keep an eye on your kids - their physical and mental health, their spendings. Their digital footprint etc.

The kids with the money are the one most likely to be experimenting.

I disagree. Kids from financially secure families (not obscenly rich kids) do not have the poverty related stressors and life circumstances that exposes them to the seedier side of life. If you are poor and living in a poor neighborhood, you are exposed more to the dealers and you have more of a need to have money for essential things like food, clothing etc.

[Anonymous]

The only kids I know who don’t experiment are a subset of those raised (traumatically) with an alcoholic or addicted parent. It’s why they say addictions skip a generation. Most kids experiment.

[Anonymous]

Teach them to resist peer pressure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A happy, functional, socially involved, financially secure family life.

Parents in good and functional marriage with no addiction, abuse or adultery

Kids in rigorous academic programs with EC and service commitments. Kids with outside enrichment and academic support..

Be present for your kids and be clued in about their day to day life.

Keep an eye on the company they keep.

Keep them off social media.

Keep an eye on your kids - their physical and mental health, their spendings. Their digital footprint etc.

The kids with the money are the one most likely to be experimenting.

I disagree. Kids from financially secure families (not obscenly rich kids) do not have the poverty related stressors and life circumstances that exposes them to the seedier side of life. If you are poor and living in a poor neighborhood, you are exposed more to the dealers and you have more of a need to have money for essential things like food, clothing etc.

I teach in a very expensive private school and drugs are pretty widespread there.

[Anonymous]

Sports, OP. Sports.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A happy, functional, socially involved, financially secure family life.

Parents in good and functional marriage with no addiction, abuse or adultery

Kids in rigorous academic programs with EC and service commitments. Kids with outside enrichment and academic support..

Be present for your kids and be clued in about their day to day life.

Keep an eye on the company they keep.

Keep them off social media.

Keep an eye on your kids - their physical and mental health, their spendings. Their digital footprint etc.

The kids with the money are the one most likely to be experimenting.

I disagree. Kids from financially secure families (not obscenly rich kids) do not have the poverty related stressors and life circumstances that exposes them to the seedier side of life. If you are poor and living in a poor neighborhood, you are exposed more to the dealers and you have more of a need to have money for essential things like food, clothing etc.

I teach in a very expensive private school and drugs are pretty widespread there.

And as I said before that I did not mean obscenely rich when I said financially secure. We are not talking about 1-3%er kids going to very expensive private schools nor are we talking about kids from poor families living in poor neighborhoods. We are talking about normal MC or UMC families.

To jog your memory here is the list I made and I stand by it.

A happy, functional, socially involved, financially secure family life.

Parents in good and functional marriage with no addiction, abuse or adultery

Kids in rigorous academic programs with EC and service commitments. Kids with outside enrichment and academic support..

Be present for your kids and be clued in about their day to day life.

Keep an eye on the company they keep.

Keep them off social media.

Keep an eye on your kids - their physical and mental health, their spending. Their digital footprint etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only kids I know who don’t experiment are a subset of those raised (traumatically) with an alcoholic or addicted parent. It’s why they say addictions skip a generation. Most kids experiment.

Actually not. Most kids actually do not experimented. The subset that gets into alcohol, vaping or drugs are ones with dysfunction in their family lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sports, OP. Sports.

High school athletes do stupid stuff all the time. They're not immune.

[Anonymous]

I find it interesting that some people think that 1+1= 2 when raising kids. You can do everything right and it can still go very wrong. My neighbors meet all of the PP’s criteria and have two out of three kids with pretty bad drug problems. The third is autistic and doesn’t have any substance abuse problems. He is also non-verbal. Meanwhile, I come from many generations of alcoholics and drug addicts on both sides of my family and never experimented with either. I was too busy raising my younger siblings because my mom was passed out after 3pm everyday. You just never know.

[Anonymous]

Ok, question...

Also have a 12 yr old starting public 7th grade, coming from a very sweet innocent private K-6th school.

What do you do if your notice the friends your child is making are not a good influence and/or making poor life choices?

[Anonymous]

You have to talk about all this before it becomes an issue. If the kids get surprised, they may not be able to resist peer pressure. My 13 year old (last year) used to ask me, which of my friends did I worry about the most. I turned it around and made her answer.

Also, give them the tools to resist.
--I told my kids at a party to always have a red solo cup filled with water so no one keeps offering them a drink.
-- With weed, tell their friends that I check for the smell every night, and they don't want to get caught.
--I told them to blame me for everything even if exaggerated--for example, my mom will know and I don't want to deal with losing my phone/drivers license/ etc. My kids' friends know me and know it's true anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You have to talk about all this before it becomes an issue. If the kids get surprised, they may not be able to resist peer pressure. My 13 year old (last year) used to ask me, which of my friends did I worry about the most. I turned it around and made her answer.

Also, give them the tools to resist.
--I told my kids at a party to always have a red solo cup filled with water so no one keeps offering them a drink.
-- With weed, tell their friends that I check for the smell every night, and they don't want to get caught.
--I told them to blame me for everything even if exaggerated--for example, my mom will know and I don't want to deal with losing my phone/drivers license/ etc. My kids' friends know me and know it's true anyway.

**her friends, not my friends.

[Anonymous]

Someone recommended a good informative book for teens about drugs not too long ago. If someone recalls, please re-post. I’ll see if I can find in a search

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sports, OP. Sports.

High school athletes do stupid stuff all the time. They're not immune.

+1

I thought Sports would be the key too, unfortunately, not in high school. Lots of the athletes smoke weed. That's how my son started doing it. The ones who don't do it are heavy into drinking. Soccer/Football are his sports.

What I have learned is to keep communication open and honest with your teens.