Things Not to Discuss With Teens and Tweens

Family/ Parenting - Family Values

By: IzzyDuncan 12-May-2011

Introduction:

The teen years are a time of growing and also a time of confusion. Your teenager and tween knows the score, so why go through the torture you both would need to endure to talk about these topics?

Drugs

Load your medicine cabinet up with prescription drugs and avoid the topic of drug use with your teens and tweens. It's just too uncomfortable to think about where this conversation might go. It's easier just to ignore the fact that more than half of the drugs bought, sold and used turn up at your child's school. Ignore the fact that 15 percent of upper-level high school students use amphetamines of some sort.

Of course, your kid would never use your drugs and neither would their friends. Don't insult your child by talking about teen drug use. The facts show more than half of kids tried an illegal drug by the time graduation rolled around. These kids obviously belong to some other parent.

Driving the Car

You trust your child with the car and know that peer pressure has no impact on your child's driving. Allow your teen to drive their friends home from school and let them take the car out late on the weekends to drive around aimlessly looking for other kids driving around aimlessly. You and your teen already know that half the teen-driving deaths happened between the time your teen left school and midnight on the weekends. Let your teen take the car on the weekend without mention of any driving rules or conditions.

You and your teen also already know that the Centers for Disease Control report that 1/3 of all teen deaths happen as a result of driving accidents. Of course you both realize that drivers age 16 to 19 are four times more likely to get in a serious accident than any other age group. Let your teen load up the car with friends and crank up the music so they can't possibly hear anything and motor off into the sunset.

Don't talk about seatbelt use, even though three out of the four teens killed in accidents weren't wearing one. You and your teen have so many other concerns, skip the unnecessary chat about driving.

Character Development

Don't prepare your child for life by discussing character development. Your kids can learn what is important in life on the street, or better yet, from movies and television. And, of course, you've watched the films and television programs your teen is viewing to know how their values are shaped.

Sex

Leave the topic of sex for your teen's discussions with their friends. Why embarrass yourself and your child by having a frank discussion about this dangerous topic. Who cares that the Kaiser Family Foundation discovered that more than one-third of teen girls became pregnant before they reached age 20? (That's approximately 820,000 teens a year and certainly not your teen girl. And if you have a male teen, you'll certainly skate on this teen topic.)

Who cares that almost four million teens contract an STD each year? It's just too embarrassing to even say the words "sexually transmitted disease" in the presence of your child. Avoid this topic at all costs.

Alcohol Use

All kids experiment with drinking a bit of alcohol, right? Why bother talking with your teen about drinking. Who cares that SADD reports that in the past 30 days more than 1/4 of all kids age 12 to 20 drank, even though they were underage? Of that group, more than 17 percent had a blast binge drinking, simply to get drunk out of their minds. It's all good teen fun and the less you know about it the better for both you and your teens and tweens.

Keep lots of alcohol in your house and leave your kids unattended while you go out on the weekend, work overtime or simply come home from work at a time well after your child gets home from school. You certainly know that almost 30 percent of all underage kids drank at their own house and nearly 60 percent raided their friend's parent's refrigerators.

Of course you know where your child is right now and what they're doing because you've discussed in detail the dangers of binge drinking, drunk driving, and mixing drinking and sex---or have you?