Troubled Teens Resources

One simple weapon against teen age drug abuse is communication. If you are just now getting around to trying to figure out how to talk to your troubled teens, well, you have a lot of catching up to do. Communication isn’t really based on words, no matter how brilliantly they are delivered. Communication starts with relationship. And cultivating that relationship starts at infancy.

Trust and relationship between parent and child starts from childhood up. Trust that parents will need from their kids when they are at logger heads during their teen years. Ideally, at least, there needs to be a history of effective communication for parents to be able to comfortably discuss the dangers that teens face on many fronts.

Communication means that parents have an ongoing dialogue with their teen.

“No loving relationship can exist without communication. Teens believe they have valuable things to say and, when a parent listens genuinely, it helps self-esteem and confidence. The most important thing to remember when it comes to talking about difficult subjects like drinking and drugs is that it’s not a five-minute “talk” — it’s about building an ongoing dialogue. As your children grow up, they will need more and more information, so start early and build on the conversation as your teen matures.
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Virtually all parents in America (98 percent) say they’ve talked with their children about drugs; however, only 27 percent of teens…say they’re learning a lot at home about the risks of drugs…
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Yet the better you communicate, the more at ease your teen will feel about discussing drugs and other sensitive issues with you.

(source)