Advice for Parents: Phase One

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As a parent, you want to protect your child and keep him/her drug-free. Here are some tips that will help:

1. Remind your teen that the Internet is public space and anyone, including college admissions offices, potential employers, and even predators, can see what they're posting online, from YouTube videos to MySpace personal pages. Talk to your teen about not posting personally-identifiable information or compromising pictures/videos and information. Also check out the links that your teen includes on his/her page. These will give you a candid view of his/her thoughts on issues like drugs and dating, as well as an inside glimpse of your teen's friends and activities.

2. Learn to decode Internet lingo. Acronyms or character symbols called "emoticons" (mixing symbols to express emotions or moods) or text-messaging language enable teens to communicate with others in a few keystrokes. While often just a convenient and quick means of communication, many teens use these acronyms and symbols to warn their friends when parents might be present and even to discuss drug use in a code that parents can't decipher.

3. Help your teen discern between the credible and incredible. This is not easy for many adults to do, much less teens, but it's important for parents to get savvy about the media that is available to youth today. Talk to your teen about stepping back and critically analyzing the messages he/she receives through ads, music, movies and television.

4. Learn drug lingo. While you may be familiar with a number of drug terms like "Mary Jane," "blow," "X" and "uppers," the vocabulary for drugs has drastically increased in the past few decades. In fact, there are more than 2,300 street terms, many of which your teen probably knows, and are associated with popular drugs used by teens like prescription drugs and inhalants.

5. Ask the right questions and know where your teen is. Know your teen's friends, and work with their parents to monitor your teen when you can't be around. Also, lots of teenagers get in trouble with drugs when they have a lot of free time, like during the summer, and right after school — from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Find ways to get your teen involved in structured, adult-supervised activities and volunteering to keep them safe and drug-free.

6. Limit your teen's time spent online, and put computers in a common area of the house so you can more easily monitor use. Be clear and consistent about what is off limits — including Web sites, chat rooms, games, blogs, or certain music downloads — and how to handle information promoting drugs or sex. Discuss consequences for breaking the rules.

Looking for more tips? Read on for more advice and ways that you can learn about your teen’s world.