Parents and Substance Abuse

How parents can prevent, stop, or slow their teen’s use of mind-altering substances.

Many teens feel impervious. For example, they may feel they can smoke, vape, and even drive under the influence and feel like it’s unlikely to hurt them

Risk-taking seems hard-wired, perhaps especially among boys, but to the extent that undue risk-taking can be mitigated, here are some possible approaches. As usual, there are no guarantees. Electrons may behave predictably but people, especially teenagers and young adults don’t.

Set fairly strict limits. To individuate from their parents, teens tend to rebel. Parents, collaborative with their kids, should establish solid but fair rules. When the teen breaks one, the parent should express disappointment rather than punish. Doing that is more likely to inculcate intrinsic (internally held values) rather than extrinsic (fear of punishment) motivation. With the latter, when the child is away from the parent’s watchful eye, they’re more likely to break more rules.

By setting relatively firm limits, your teen is more likely to satisfy a need to rebel with less dangerous actions. For example, by not allowing soda or junk food in the house, your child may feel s/he’s rebelling merely by sneaking a soda and chips.

Discuss or not discuss substance use

There are good reasons to discuss substance use:

What if you’re a substance abuser? If you’re not ready to stop, you probably need to address this with your child. Again, no guarantees it would help, but I’d probably start the conversation with something like,

Then I’d try to listen well, jointly problem solve, respectfully reiterating my concerns if needed, and end with a hug.

Advocated far less often is not talking with your child about substance use. But a case can be made for that. Talking about it often results in a fight, blaming the child for dalliances, etc. That can exacerbate the teen’s desire to rebel. At minimum, it makes the issue more top-of-mind for the child, making him or her more likely to use drugs in the future. I know some adults whose parents never discussed drugs or alcohol with them and in retrospect, those adults feel that if their parents had done so, drugs would have been more a part of their consciousness and thus they’d have been more tempted.

Help ensure your child has reason to want to not endanger their health. If a teen does poorly in school and has few good friends, s/he may feel s/he has little to lose by hurting their life by doing drugs, getting pregnant as a teen, etc. Of course, you can’t turn an inveterate struggler into a most-likely-to-succeed but you can facilitate their having realistic hope for a decent life. A few things you might do:

The takeaway

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