Several short conversations work better than one serious sit-down. Lead with a question rather than a rule, be accurate rather than alarming, and make sure your child knows to call 911 if someone becomes unresponsive. The goal is not agreement. It is that they still tell you things at sixteen.
You have been meaning to have this conversation for months.
Every time you plan it, you picture it going badly, so you put it off again. And the longer you wait, the bigger and more serious it feels, which makes it harder still.
I am Chris Howard. Let me take some pressure off that, because the version of this conversation that works is much smaller than the one you have been dreading.
The talk is the wrong idea
Parents imagine one serious sit-down conversation.
Teenagers experience that as being summoned, and most of them have decided how it is going to go before they have sat down.
What works better is several much shorter conversations, usually sideways. In the car. While doing something else. Ten minutes rather than an hour.
The car is underrated for exactly this reason. Nobody has to make eye contact, and either of you can end it by arriving somewhere.
Lead with curiosity, not with policy
Starting with the rule means you have finished before you have begun. They already know the rule.
Starting with a question gets you information.
What do people at school actually do? What have you seen? What do you think about it? Has anyone offered you anything?
You may not like the answers. But a teenager who tells you something true has given you something to work with, and one who has learned that honesty produces a lecture will stop supplying it.
If they say something that alarms you, try not to react in the moment. The reaction is what they will remember, and it determines whether there is a second conversation.
Decide what you’re actually trying to achieve
Before you open your mouth, decide what success looks like.
If the goal is for them to agree with you, you will probably lose that one. Teenagers are built to not agree with you, and it is not personal.
If the goal is for them to keep talking to you about it, you can win that, and it is worth considerably more.
In my experience the families who get through adolescence best are not the ones with the strictest rules. They are the ones whose child still tells them things at sixteen. The Stepping Into Adulthood piece covers the same idea for the years that come after.
That is a different objective and it changes how you handle every part of the conversation.
Be accurate about what has changed
Teenagers have a finely tuned sense for an exaggerating adult, and once you have triggered it, everything else you say gets discounted.
So be accurate rather than alarming.
Do not claim that one experiment ruins a life. Do explain, plainly, that pills bought from anyone other than a pharmacy may not be what they appear to be, and that this is a genuinely different risk from the one you grew up with.
The specific true thing lands. The general alarming thing does not.
If you want the detail on that, I have written separately about counterfeit pills and what has changed.
The sentence most parents leave out
This is the most important part of any version of this conversation.
Tell them that if they are ever with someone who becomes unresponsive, they should call 911 and stay.
Then tell them plainly that you would rather they called and faced any consequence from you than did not call.
Most young people hesitate in that situation because they are frightened of getting into trouble, or of getting a friend into trouble. Taking that fear off the table is the single most useful sentence in this entire conversation.
Say it in those words, and say it more than once over the years.
If you think something is already happening
Talk first, search second.
Most parents do it the other way round, and then spend the whole conversation discussing the search instead of the situation.
Describe what you have noticed rather than what you have concluded. “You have been getting in late and you seem exhausted” gives them somewhere to go. “I know you are using” does not.
Expect denial. It is normal on a first conversation and does not mean you were wrong or that the conversation failed.
And do not involve the whole extended family. A teenager facing four concerned relatives in one week does not experience four people who care. They experience being surrounded, and they go quiet for months. Where a conversation is clearly not enough any more, the Teen Intervention page describes what a planned next step actually looks like.
What to do when it goes badly
Sometimes it goes badly. They walk out, or they are furious, or they say something designed to end the conversation.
Let it end. Do not follow them upstairs.
Come back to it in two or three days, briefly, without referring to how the last one went. “I did not handle that well. I still want to talk about it at some point.”
Parents underestimate how much ground that recovers. An adult who admits they got something wrong is unusual enough to be noticed.
If the situation is an emergency
If someone is unresponsive, or you believe an overdose may be happening, call 911 immediately.
For a mental health crisis that is not immediately life-threatening, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is confidential, available at any hour, and carries no cost to the caller.
Los Angeles County residents can reach the Department of Mental Health ACCESS line on 800-854-7771, which can dispatch a mobile crisis team.
Frequently asked questions
At what age should I start?
Earlier and smaller than most parents think. Short, age-appropriate conversations over years work better than one big one at fifteen.
What if I used drugs myself at their age?
You do not have to volunteer a full history. Being broadly honest tends to help more than a denial they will not believe anyway.
Should both parents be in the conversation?
Usually one at a time. Two parents at once reads as a summons, even when it is not meant to.
They say all their friends do it. What do I say?
Ask who, and what they have actually seen. The claim is often broader than the reality, and asking calmly gets you information rather than an argument.
Should I set a consequence in advance?
A clear expectation is useful. A threatened consequence you would not carry out is worse than none, because it teaches that your limits can be waited out.
What if they won’t talk at all?
Say your piece briefly and leave it. A short statement they did not respond to still gets heard. A long conversation they resisted usually does not.
When is this past a conversation?
If use is regular rather than occasional, if school, sleep or friendships have changed noticeably, or if you are frightened, then you are past what another conversation alone will fix.
If something has already happened and you’re not sure how serious it is
That is a reasonable thing to talk through with someone before deciding what to do. For a minor, families have options that are not available once a child turns eighteen, and it is worth understanding them before you act.