Amber Hollingsworth (YouTube, Dec 2, 2018) gives parents step-by-step advice on how to talk with teenagers/young adults about marijuana use. She emphasizes avoiding legal/ideological arguments, keeping discussions personal and non-defensive, using therapeutic questions to prompt self-recognition of problems (e.g., asking about frequency, consequences, or signs seen in others), and practical tactics such as home or lab drug screening. She also notes a common quantitative drug-screen cutoff (50) and gives example lab result ranges to judge heavy use.
Questions this video answers
50 (units implied by the test's reporting threshold).
She mentions seeing numbers as low as 60–70 and as high as about 4,000.
Chapters
Okay, parents, get your pen and paper out because you're going to want to make notes. In this video, I'm going to tell you exactly how to handle having that super difficult conversation with your kid about smoking weed. If you've got a teenager or young adult or college student, if you haven't had the conversation, it's probably coming your way. And this conversation is loaded with landmines. And if you're not careful, you're going to get trapped, because trust me, they're going to come at you with tons of arguments why smoking weed should be totally okay. And if you haven't already done so, make sure you check out my video where I go through each of those arguments and tell you what the real truth is. But this video is not about those arguments or the truth. This video is how to have the conversation with your kid about smoking weed. So let's say you've caught them maybe even more than once, and they're just angry with you and they feel like they should be allowed to smoke weed, and everyone does it and their other friend's mom lets them do it. And. And you're just being ridiculous. And you're so much more strict than other moms and dads. What's your problem? You better be ready for this conversation. Okay, first, let me tell you what points not to make. Do not go with the. Well, it's illegal for you to do it, and as long as you live here and it's illegal, then you can't do it. Well, that's just a really bad argument for teens because they don't care. They're going to do it anyway. The legal argument really doesn't hold much weight, so I would totally avoid that one. How you do want to go about this conversation is, number one, don't make it an argument. If it's an argument, you need to walk away and come back when it can be a conversation. Because when you're arguing with your kid, if your voice is loud, like louder than my voice right now, or you're mad and you got that tone in your voice, then they ain't gonna hear anything you're saying. They hear Charlie Brown. Womp, womp, womp. So if you want your kid to hear what you're saying, it needs to be a conversation, not an argument. So here's how I have the conversation with all the young people that come into my office. And. And trust me, I have this conversation a lot. Okay? So the first thing is, I'm not defensive about it. I'm not in an uproar about it, and I'm not going to freak. So when they start with the, you know, well, everybody smokes weed, and I think it should be legal. Guess what I say. You know what? I know you're right. Lots of people do smoke weed these days. And to be honest, whatever. Legal, illegal, doesn't really affect my job at all because I deal with addiction problems. So I try to keep the conversation very personal. Stay out of those big world problems. Hey, somebody else can solve those problems. There's some politicians out there and some lobbying people, and maybe one day you want to get involved in that. But right now, this is about you and your kids. So stay focused on what you're trying to do. All right? Are you keeping up? We're not arguing. We're not going to talk about whether it should be legal or illegal. We're going to stay out of all those landmines, and we're going to keep it personal. So we're going to say something like, well, you know, you're right. Lots of people do smoke weed, and they don't have a problem. But a small percentage of people really do develop a problem with it. And so what I try to get at with my patients is, well, how much are you smoking it? Because here's the deal. They're going to tell you things like, well, it's safer than alcohol. But most of the kids that I see that smoke weed, they smoke weed every day. Not just once a day, like all day. They wake and bake. They skip out at lunch and smoke. They smoke after school or work, and they smoke before bed. And that's just the bare minimum. They're smoking four, five, six times a day. Now, if you were dealing with someone that was drinking every day four, five, or six times a day, or drinking in the morning, you would be like, holy gosh, this person's got a problem. But kids that smoke weed, they feel like they can smoke weed, like, every day, all day long. It's not a problem. Because what they're not taking into consideration is, sure, weed is like any other substance, and they're probably not going to be super problematic in small doses. But a lot of these kids that I see are smoking a ton. And when you point that out, they may not admit it, but it's going to start to register in there. The second tactic that I use sometimes is I'll say, have you ever known someone that you thought did have a problem with weed? And most of the time they'll say, oh, yeah, this one guy, or whatever. And I'LL say, well, tell me how you knew they had a problem. And then they'll start to tell you about this person. Well, you know, they're 40 and they're still living in their mom's basement, or they dropped out of school, or, you know, they skipped class constantly to go smoke. And the reason why this is a helpful sort of therapeutic technique is because it's going to make them identify what are problematic symptoms of someone that has a problem with smoking weed. So that if they see those symptoms in their self, it's going to be a lot harder to deny. And so when you can have them identify symptoms that someone else is having a problem, it's a sneaky way to plant the seed in there. And lastly, if I know the kid has been smoking weed, then I'll say, well, what kind of problems does it cause you? Because it's really not about the drug. It's about, is it causing you problems in your life? Like, is there a lot of consequences? And you keep doing it anyway. So usually if a kid's sitting in my office, I know they've had at least one, which is mom and dad's mad at them, and drug them into Amber's office. So I can start with that and say, well, clearly I know your parents don't like it and they're upset about it because you're in here because they got like a possession charge or underage drinking charge. So there's usually one consequence to start with. And if you're having this conversation with your kid, chances are it's probably because something's happened. So you can use that as a starting point. And they may not admit to you that it is causing problems like that their grades are going down or that they're skipping school, or that their girlfriend broke up with them because all they wanted to do is smoke weed and they never spent time with them anymore. But asking them the question makes them think about it. And so remember, this is a conversation. This isn't a power struggle or an argument. We're focused on winning the war, not winning an argument. Now, if you're not sure if your kid has a real life problem with drugs and alcohol or they're just doing normal teen experimentation, I've got a couple of resources for you. The first thing you can do is you can check out my video on the top 10 signs and symptoms that your kid has a problem, and it's not just a phase. So that's option number one. Check out that video and by the end you'll know for sure. Option number two, you can do a drug screen. And in fact, I've written a whole home drug screening guide just for parents. Now, this guide's not telling you, like how to pee in the cup, do this and do that. That's pretty simple. In fact, the instructions will tell you that. This guide is to tell you all the secret NINJA parent tricks on how to do it, how to do it without starting an argument. What to do when they say that's old, what to do when they refuse to tell, take a test, all that kind of stuff. You can drug screen them. And if you're concerned, particularly about marijuana, you can start with a home screen. But you might already know it's going to be positive. But what you can do is you can take your kid to a lab and you can ask for a marijuana level. So let me tell you a little secret. The cutoff level for marijuana on most of these drug and alcohol tests is 50. So if it's just a teensy little bit in there, it shouldn't show positive. So I'm just going to go ahead and tell you. One of the secrets out of that NINJA trick for parents manual on drug screening is, is don't let them tell you, oh, I was in the car and somebody else was smoking it up. And I might get positive from secondhand smoke. Definitely not. You got to have more than that trace amount in your system to get positive on a screen. So if you already know they're smoking weed, but you want to know how much and how often, then take them to a lab. There's lots of labs that you can walk into and ask for a dose screen and get, and ask specifically for a quantitative level. And when you get that drug screen back, it's not just going to say negative and positive. It's going to say how much is in there. So I've already told you 50 is the cutoff level. So that should give you a little bit of point of reference. I've seen numbers as low as 60, 70, something like that, and I've seen numbers like 4,000. So if you're getting those really big numbers up there, then guess what? They're smoking a lot. And when they try to tell you it takes 30 days to get out your system and all this, you know what, you're right. Sometimes it does take a long time to get out. That's why we're going to go to the lab and we're going to get a screen and we'll find out what your levels are and we'll take you next week to make sure your levels are going in the right direction, see another Super Secret Ninja Parent Trick. There's a whole ton of them. I'm going to make sure you have the link below so you can go and get my handy Dandy Secret Ninja Tricks for Parents on how to Do Home Drug Screening Guide. If you thought this video was helpful, make sure and click the like button. And if you want more information on how to deal with a kid that's using drugs or alcohol, hit the subscribe button and the bell so that you'll have access to all the parent advice videos. For tons more information on all things addiction and recovery and lots of free expert advice, make sure and subscribe and hit the bell so you don't miss a thing.
