Opening Lines of Communication

Catching Your Child With Drugs

If you’ve caught your child using drugs or “holding” them for a friend, you might be speechless. Worse yet, you might want to lash out with harsh words. If you feel angry or that you may be out of control at that moment, give yourself a cooling-off period before you talk to your child. The next step, experts say, is to let your child know that you do not approve of drug use or possession.

The following phrases work to get good communication going:

• “Let’s talk about how you got these drugs and the impact of what you’ve done.”
  
• “I’m really disappointed. You know I don’t approve of drug use. I especially don’t approve of you using drugs.”
  
• “I’m going to stand by you and always love you and guide you, but I do not want you taking drugs. I don’t want you making the wrong choice and then have bad things happen in your life.”

If your child has admitted to using drugs recently, you may want to ask your doctor or counselor for help. He she will give you good advice and keep the conversation confidential. During your talk, you can ask your child where he or she got the drugs. If your child got drugs from a friend, ask the name of the friend. Depending on the situation, you may want to let the parents of the friend know.

If your child got drugs at school, you may decide that telling the principal is the best thing to do. There’s no doubt that talking to a parent or a principal about where your kid got drugs might be a what hard choice. However, in the end, you might decide that this is the best alternative for you when you consider this fact: if you don’t alert the principal or a parent, the drug problem may continue and may even get worse.

If your child used allowance money to buy the drugs, you might want to take away the allowance until your child earns back your trust. Explain to your child that he or she let you down by using their allowance for something illegal and harmful and that you now question their judgment about being responsible with money.

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