Since the beginning of time, good kids have been known to do dumb things. The same can be said of naive and well-meaning parents. Because they don’t know what to say, some parents fail to talk to their children about drugs. Others develop a false sense of security after they do.
It’s much more comfortable for parents to hold the belief that things haven’t changed much since they were young than it is to accept the fact that they have. It’s also much easier for parents to believe that their teenagers always tell them the truth and would never try drugs, but who ever said parenting was supposed to be easy?
Parents ask me when they should talk to their kids, what they should say, and what they can do to follow through. Ben Franklin said, “Wise is the man who fixes his roof before it rains.” I couldn’t agree more. I suggest that parents would be well served to sit down with their children and start talking about a home drug testing program as early as middle school.
To protect privacy, home drug testing kits can be ordered on the Internet and shipped in nondescriptive packaging. The accuracy of the most popular
drug test kits is comparable to labs and medical clinics at a fraction of the price. Results usually appear within minutes and are easy to read by the average parent in the convenience of their own home.
If the idea of drug testing your teens sounds unreasonable, consider how much times have changed. If someone told me when I was in high school by the time my son attended middle school, that police officers (now affectionately referred to as school resource officers) and dogs trained to detect drugs would patrol school hallways, I would have never believed it.
Metal detectors and school shootings aren’t nightmares: they have become a reality.