RDR wrote:I don't have direct experience of this so I'm just throwing out a few thoughts ...
- do your suspicions match with his claim that it is very occasional?
- is he willing to stop?
- how is he justifying it?
- how has he responded? does he see any issue with it? is he defiant?
- how does he justify/respond to issues raised about the psychological effects of dope today? (it is not the same stuff that was around when I/we were growing up)
- is he aware that if he got caught and has a drug charge that he closes down any opportunities to travel to the US?
- how clued in is he about the issues around carrying quantities (ie in relation to charges) and dealing (in the 'but I just bought a bit extra for my mate and he was just giving me the money for it' in a teen's head isn't dealing)
- who are the crowd he is with? are they also doing other drugs? what kind of lifestyles are they living?
- how do you feel about illegal drugs being in your house and how does he feel about respecting that?
- where's he getting it?
- how is he funding it?
- are you seeing an effect in him? has his behaviour, his work, his aspirations changed?
- do you think you could ground him? do you think it would be effective? do you want him to stop? are you willing to tolerate it and hope he'll grow out of it? where is your line in the sand?
There's no one way to deal with this (as there's no one way to deal with underage drinking for example - though I get this is entirely different in that it never becomes legal). I would say don't jump into indefinite grounding - I think there's a lot of conversation needs to take place before you can work out how to play it. You may have a starting point of - eg do not bring drugs into my house but I honestly don't know that you can 100% prevent a 17 year old smoking if they can't see the issues with it (you can of course cut off finances, you can ground them but you can't really do it for forever).
Best of luck. I dread the idea of facing this situation tbh.
Thanks all. I sat down with him after school. He said he started smoking at Longitude. He hangs out with a mix of lads and girls. Some have, let's say, questionable backgrounds. Others don't.
I used some of these lads as an example to him. I put it to him that these lads have zero aspirations. He is well aware of this and he is adamant he wants to go to College. He is in 5th year at the moment and doing well so far. He claims he only smokes the odd weekend as that's all he can afford
. He has a part time job. We don't give him money. He said a lot of lads drink and he's not into it as it makes him sick and messy (his words!). He maintains he never smoked at home and doesn't carry it around as he knows it's illegal.
He claims he is not smoking to escape anything that may be going on. He said it is purely for a bit of craic wth the lads. Some of them smoke, some don't.
He said he won't do it again while he is under 18 (yeah right). I said he will be checked by me and his dad every time he comes home. He said that's grand as he was quitting anyway to study for Xmas exams.
I don't know ladies. We have open communication. Jesus, they'd age you
[quote="RDR"]I don't have direct experience of this so I'm just throwing out a few thoughts ...
- do your suspicions match with his claim that it is very occasional?
- is he willing to stop?
- how is he justifying it?
- how has he responded? does he see any issue with it? is he defiant?
- how does he justify/respond to issues raised about the psychological effects of dope today? (it is not the same stuff that was around when I/we were growing up)
- is he aware that if he got caught and has a drug charge that he closes down any opportunities to travel to the US?
- how clued in is he about the issues around carrying quantities (ie in relation to charges) and dealing (in the 'but I just bought a bit extra for my mate and he was just giving me the money for it' in a teen's head isn't dealing)
- who are the crowd he is with? are they also doing other drugs? what kind of lifestyles are they living?
- how do you feel about illegal drugs being in your house and how does he feel about respecting that?
- where's he getting it?
- how is he funding it?
- are you seeing an effect in him? has his behaviour, his work, his aspirations changed?
- do you think you could ground him? do you think it would be effective? do you want him to stop? are you willing to tolerate it and hope he'll grow out of it? where is your line in the sand?
There's no one way to deal with this (as there's no one way to deal with underage drinking for example - though I get this is entirely different in that it never becomes legal). I would say don't jump into indefinite grounding - I think there's a lot of conversation needs to take place before you can work out how to play it. You may have a starting point of - eg do not bring drugs into my house but I honestly don't know that you can 100% prevent a 17 year old smoking if they can't see the issues with it (you can of course cut off finances, you can ground them but you can't really do it for forever).
Best of luck. I dread the idea of facing this situation tbh.[/quote]
Thanks all. I sat down with him after school. He said he started smoking at Longitude. He hangs out with a mix of lads and girls. Some have, let's say, questionable backgrounds. Others don't.
I used some of these lads as an example to him. I put it to him that these lads have zero aspirations. He is well aware of this and he is adamant he wants to go to College. He is in 5th year at the moment and doing well so far. He claims he only smokes the odd weekend as that's all he can afford :crazy1: . He has a part time job. We don't give him money. He said a lot of lads drink and he's not into it as it makes him sick and messy (his words!). He maintains he never smoked at home and doesn't carry it around as he knows it's illegal.
He claims he is not smoking to escape anything that may be going on. He said it is purely for a bit of craic wth the lads. Some of them smoke, some don't.
He said he won't do it again while he is under 18 (yeah right). I said he will be checked by me and his dad every time he comes home. He said that's grand as he was quitting anyway to study for Xmas exams.
I don't know ladies. We have open communication. Jesus, they'd age you :sneaky: