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The Worst Way To Respond To Teen Drugs/Alcohol Use

10 Jul 2023 · 1 min

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0:35

Amber Hollingsworth critiques common parental reactions to teen drug/alcohol use, describing how parents often attempt to ‘fix’ external problems (checking grades, calling teachers, insisting on extra credit) and become angry at home. She argues this approach misattributes the problem—teens see parents as the problem—and recommends allowing natural consequences rather than acting as the ‘bad guy.’

Chapters

Parents want to do is they want to, like, check the parent portal and make sure you're doing your schoolwork and make sure you turn that in and make sure your grades are good and call your teachers and ask them, could you just do extra credit? Because you really need that one credit. You're not going to graduate on time. So they want to, like, try to fix everything out in your life but yell at you and be mad at you at home. So that leads to the wrong thing. Number one, the person's like, I'm passionate. I don't know what the problem is. Like, I'm fine. You know, these drugs aren't a problem for me. What's the problem for me is my mom and my dad. So when we correct that we let the outside consequences happen and we don't distress by being the bad guy, then they see it so much faster.