One of the most important things our society needs today is helping kids stay away from drugs. The best way for parents, counselors and teachers as well as friends and other family members to accomplish this is by relaying the honest information about drugs to the teens. Teens and drugs has become a huge problem in society and more and more parents are losing control of the situation.

If you talk openly and freely with your kids about drugs and answer questions honestly about things they want to know, you will have a better chance of keeping them from trying drugs. The one thing you do not want to do is lecture.

 Lectures are for the classroom where kids are made to listen and learn in order to gain an education. If you start your talks with a lecture, you are going to lose their attention and they will have even more questions that the drug dealer can probably answer better than you can.

Parents need to read about stories of teens that were into drugs and have since cleaned up. Telling stories of the effects of drug use are going to have more of an effect on your teen’s way of thinking than telling them how bad drugs are for them. Everything today seems to be bad for you, and it may seem to your teen that the only way to find out is to give it a try. In order to address their way of thinking, you can tell them real stories about other people who have tried drugs. A true story will go farther than a lecture on how bad drugs are for you.

Never put your teen on the spot – if you think they may need the talk, you should bring it up in a discussion by leading into it. Do not sit them down and say, “Are you doing drugs?” This only pushes them away and makes them defensive and they feel as if you do not trust them.