Amber Hollingsworth advises generally against telling another parent that their child is using drugs because parents often react defensively, blame the messenger, or cannot act without damaging relationships. She emphasizes prioritizing and protecting your relationship with your own child to help them get better, and notes narrow exceptions only for very close, trustworthy relationships.
Chapters
Super big question that I get a lot of is, I caught my kid or found out my kid is using with this other kid. Should I tell their parents? I get this question all the time. Here's the answer, Probably not. And here's why it usually doesn't go so well. People just really don't want to hear bad news like that about their kid. And a lot of times what happens when you try to tell them is they don't believe you or they blame you, or they think your kid is the bad influence kid. Maybe they are, but nonetheless, like, it doesn't resonate with them. What needs to resonate, which is, oh, my gosh, my kids like doing this. Thank you so much for telling me. It's like, don't shoot the messenger. A lot of times, like, they want to shoot the messenger, okay? Because it's embarrassing. It's not good. If you find out about this, it's like your best friend's kid, okay? Obviously this is your best friend. You need to say, hey, this is going on. I mean, provided your best friend, someone that can handle hearing that from you. There are certain cases where you might want to do that. But if this is just somebody's kid and you don't really know them, probably not. I'm telling you, it can turn on you like, super big time. Like, they're going to come out of it judging you instead of, like, realizing their kid has a problem, too. Like, I know it sounds crazy, but it's the truth. Second reason why you don't want to do that is because your kid will freaking freak out and hate you. And I know you don't care because you're like, they deserve it. But telling you, I'll tell you again, tell you every video, your relationship is the most important thing that you have to leverage your kid into getting better. You are saving your kid. Focus on your kid. You got to save your kid. You can't save everybody else. Don't use that as a punishment against them. You focus on your kid and them getting better and you do what you got to do. And I'm sorry if that sounds mean, but seriously, you got a big problem and this is, like, important lives are at stake here. This your kid. You focus on them. Don't use it as a weapon to say, I'm going to tell their mom and get you in trouble or whatever, because that is going to backfire on you from your kid and likely from the other parent. The only time I'd ever do that is if you know this person really, really good. And y' all have the kind of relationship where either one of y' all would do that. And you know they can handle it. They promise not tell their kid. So it's like even if you tell them, but they can't even address it with their kid because if they found out it came from you, then it would cause big trouble. Then you're not helping them. You're just telling them a piece of information that they can't use anyway. So think twice about telling somebody else's parents that their kid is using drugs or doing whatever. I'm not saying never do it, but I'm saying think seriously long and hard about it.
