Talking to Kids About Tough Issues:  Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs

Tips, information, and publications aimed at preventing substance abuse

Tips

• Educate yourself about alcohol, tobacco, and drug use before talking to your children. You will lose credibility if you don’t have your facts right.
• Be ready to talk to your children as early as the fourth grade, when they may first feel peer pressure to experiment with alcohol, drugs, or cigarettes.
• Listen to your child’s or teen’s concerns nonjudgmentally. Repeat them to make clear that you understand. Don’t preach.
• Explain that it’s against the law for a child or teen to use alcohol or cigarettes and that using drugs is always illegal—for good reason.
• Explain how drug use can hurt people in several ways—for example, the transmission of AIDS through shared needles, slowed growth, impaired coordination, accidents.
• Discuss the legal issues. A conviction for a drug offense can lead to time in prison or cost someone a job, driver’s license, or college loan.
• Use “teachable moments” to convey your message—television news, TV dramas, books, newspaper stories.
• Establish an ongoing conversation rather than giving a one-time speech.
• Set some time aside for you and your child to act out scenarios in which one person tries to pressure another to drink alcohol, smoke, or use a drug. Figure out two or three ways to handle each situation and talk about which works best.
• Remember that you set the example. Avoid contradictions between your words and your actions. Use alcohol in moderation, don’t smoke cigarettes, and never use drugs.

Excerpted from National Crime Prevention Council @ http://www.ncpc.org/topices/alcohol-tobacco-and-other-drugs