FAMILY TIES - SILENCE WON'T WORK REGARDING KIDS AND DRUGS

Even before Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio reminded parents that -- oh,
my heavens! -- there is drug use among high school students, we all knew it.

In fact, most parents who went to high school during the 1970s and 1980s --
when recreational drug use was at its peak -- have firsthand knowledge.
Today's high schoolers are actually less likely to use drugs than their
parents were at their age, and they're more likely to have parents who were
users.

So for all the headlines and hand-wringing over heroin use in Scottsdale,
plans for drugsniffing dogs and parenting seminars, and questions about
whether kids are smoking it, snorting it or shooting it, we seem to be
avoiding a very thorny question.

How do we talk with our kids about drugs if we used them ourselves?

Increasingly, the answer seems to be, we don't.

A new survey by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America shows that drug
experienced parents see less risk in drug use and talk less with their kids
about drugs than parents did just a few years ago. Twelve percent of
parents have never discussed drugs with the child, according to the survey,
which is twice as many as just six years ago.

The survey also points out a huge disconnect between what parents believe
their kids are doing, and what the kids are actually doing. Only about 20
percent of parents believe their teenage child has a friend who uses
marijuana, but two-thirds of teens say they do. And about twice as many
teens are using marijuana (39 percent) than parents believe (18 percent).

But there's precious little information out there about how to have
conversations with your kids about the dangers you navigated as a teen --
whether it's drugs, sex or violence -- without sounding like a hypocrite or
an outright liar.

David Shuff regularly encounters parents in a similar bind as the head of
guidance and counseling for the Mesa Unified School District. The real
danger, says Shuff, is when we say nothing.

"These parents have found it difficult to have conversations with their
kids. But because of the lack of conversation with their kids, that sends a
message as well."

Parent-child talks about drugs and sex aren't one-time, scheduled affairs.
By being regularly available to your child, these conversations will flow
from the time the toddler asks where babies come from until she gets
married and has her own children.

Shuff says it's important to acknowledge the difficulties and pressures
your teen or preteen faces, and to acknowledge that you made some poor
choices when you were their age. You don't have to list every drug you ever
took, and please don't regale them with details about your nights of
debauchery. Simply saying you've made mistakes that, yes, included using
drugs or having sex before you were ready, will suffice.

It's also important to draw a distinction between the way things were when
you were a teenager and the times we live in today.

"The choices they make today can have such devastating consequences," says
Shuff. "Some of those same choices 20 years ago didn't have those same
consequences.

The parent who kind of feels like, 'This is no big deal. I passed around a
joint when I was his age.' Well, you didn't pass around that joint."

You may not have had kids taking Ecstasy or Soma or smoking heroin at your
high school, either. But today's kids know all about that stuff. If they
want it, they sure as hell know where to find it.

And it's not just at Saguaro High or Desert Mountain or Chaparral. It's in
every high school in every school district in every state in the country.

That's not to say the district's efforts to keep drugs off campus are
misguided. Indeed, they are necessary.

But no drug-sniffing dog can be a parent. And we do our children a grave
disservice when we decide that the best way to educate them is to remain silent.