Parent Tips: How to Break Barriers in Giving The Talk to Your Teen

As parents’ advocates in fighting Teen Substance Abuse in Los Angeles, we have grown to understand how emotionally distracting it is to find out that your adolescent is into substance abuse.

While this can draw out different kinds of reactions from you, we encourage you to be in the perspective of a learner with the intent to give love unswervingly. This can be challenging to accomplish but with help from professional providers of Teen Rehabilitation in Los Angeles, California, you can make it. It’s vital to be able to talk to your child about what’s going on in a way that will be conversational and not confrontational.

But how do you start a conversation when you feel that barriers are in place?

Here are helpful tips you can apply:

• Affirm your unconditional love and be firm about it.
• Maintain calm disposition when opening up the conversation. Even your teenagers will know that it’s hard to walk out on someone who’s talking to them in a calm demeanor.
• Be issue-focused. Bring up the fact of their health and safety rather than on labeling them as a rebellious or bad child.
• Emphasize the value of honesty. Explain to them that people are being trusted more when they are honest and lies are eventually caught in the long run. Encourage them about telling the truth instead of threatening them about finding out once they lied.
• Establish an advanced thinking about how you can verify your child’s words, and then bring them up. For instance, if they tell you that they’ve been hanging out in their close friend’s house; make sure you’ve talked with that friend’s parents ahead to check your child’s whereabouts.
• Be objective when you bring out the proof that your child is lying. Remember that your goal is not to prove that they lied, but to keep them safe from addictive harm.
• Strive to find out the reasons why they had to withhold the truth in the first place. Don’t reprimand immediately as this can cause them to clam up even more.
• Think about giving them some immunity. When you perceive that your teen has been lying a lot, ensure them that you will clear their record if they will be truthful this time. But also hold them accountable if they won’t stay true to their words.
• Reward their honesty. When your adolescent opens up to you something that you know is very difficult for them to talk about, affirm them for it and assure them how proud you are of their courage.

Dear parents, you have to know that your teenager did not set out to engage in addictive behaviors in order to be trapped in them. In many instances, they do it out of mindless reasons. For this, they have to be talked out of responsibly. If you need assistance in working this out with your beloved teen, our team at Teen Drug Addiction can help you.