“Hey, Mom. Did you and Dad do drugs when you were young?”
Look out, parents! This is not a simple question. This is a kid looking for some leverage and a way to get some tacit approval for drug use. This is a kid looking for the opportunity to say, “Well you did it too.”
If you didn’t use drugs it is a great chance to explain why you didn’t. If you did, you might want to consider this reply. “Yes, I was very foolish and tried some drugs. But I was lucky to have people who showed me what they were doing to me. I saw my friends having horrible problems. Their grades went down. Their family lives were in shambles, and two of them died of overdoses. Then one day I realized that I wanted a family some day, and I thought how humiliated I would be to have to honestly talk about how foolish I was. So that’s why I quit and why I hope you never have to be as humiliated as I am when your own kids ask this question.”
Jim Fay
©2009 Jim Fay, Charles Fay, Ph.d.& Love and Logic® Institute