Is there a right way to talk to your kids about vaping, alcohol and drugs

talk to your kids about vaping
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Photo by Sebastian Radu on Unsplash

As children grow older, we all inevitably need to have tough conversations with them around the things we would rather not. One of the problems is that because we often don’t know where to start when it comes to how to talk to your kids about vaping, alcohol and drugs, we can have a tendency to shy away from it and put out heads in the sand. But talk to them we must. If you are wondering how to talk to your kids about vaping, alcohol and drugs, here author Elaine Robertson North who has been there done that, and is the author of two books, I Can’t Tell You Why and Bring Me To Life (available here) shares her experience and strategies.

How to talk to your kids about vaping, alcohol and drugs: My experience

When we were on holiday in the summer, my newly-turned 14 year old son asked my husband if he could try his beer. I took a picture of him as he took hold of the pint glass, eyes full of expectation, and then a second with his face contorted in disgust after he’d tasted it.

My immediate reaction was one of relief that he didn’t like it, and then I chastised myself for not being more ready for his inevitable curiosity in alcohol. Without the pandemic, I’m confident this is something we would have been facing much earlier but a series of lockdowns meant he barely left the house to socialise for the first two years of secondary school. Today, however, many of his extended friendship group are regularly drinking, smoking and vaping, with some already experimenting with drugs. 

Sadly there’s nothing unusual about this. A recent survey by NHS Digital found that around 21% of 15 year old girls are current e-cigarette users. That’s 1 in 5! And 13% of 11 year olds had drunk alcohol.

Tempting as it is to just lock our kids in their rooms the minute they hit secondary school age, there’s no way to avoid the fact that temptation will come their way at some point, and in all sorts of dangerous shapes and sizes. Most of us want our kids to have friends and be sociable and there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution for keeping them safe while they do so. The best we can do, is try and make sure our kids are well-informed and feel comfortable enough to tell us everything, however hard some of it might be to hear.

It’s good to talk

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first. As with any tricky subject, having an open dialogue with your child is the best way to avoid any number of potential disasters. If you have the kind of relationship where you can sit together and have a good chat about anything and everything then in all honesty, you’ve pretty much cracked it.

When my son voluntarily starts a conversation about something that blew his mind in a school lesson, or something that made him laugh on YouTube, I stop what I’m doing and I listen. I share his sense of amazement, I laugh with him and make sure he knows I’m interested in him and in every aspect of his life, because the next time he starts a conversation, it might just be about how he’s been invited to join those friends who are drinking and vaping and he’s not sure what to do, and I want him to know I’m always ready to listen.

Why timing is everything

None of us want to believe our child might try vaping at 11 but that’s the reality so let’s be prepared. Introducing the subject casually always feels like the best way to me – passing someone vaping in the street, for example, could be an opportunity to ask what they already know about vaping and whether or not they’ve ever thought about trying it.

If you sense they have no interest or it’s not something they’ve even thought about then leave it for a while. If nothing else, it’s a subtle reminder that no subject is off limits and they can talk to you about anything. Starting casually also means you can dip in and out of a subject, building up to a more serious chat when the time feels right about the health risks and legalities, for example.

Be prepared

It’s important to have a plan. Think about whether you want to introduce alcohol slowly and safely at home, for example, and if so, when might that start? So when your teenager asks you if they can try your drink, you know already if it’s the right time to say yes. When the invitations start coming in for those teenage parties, what parameters might you set? Will there be consequences if your conditions aren’t met? You’ll be in a much stronger position if you’ve thought this all through in advance.

Keep it real

I think it’s pointless to tell your teenager to just say no and somehow expect that to be the end of it. There are always exceptions but I can’t imagine there are many children who won’t be tempted by something you’d rather they avoided as they journey from childhood to adulthood. So we have to be realistic that experimentation will happen and this is where that strong communication comes into play.

I strongly believe the next best thing to them not doing anything, is knowing exactly what they’re doing. So if they try vaping, make sure they know they can tell you so at least you can talk about why they did it, how it made them feel and so on.

The influence of friends

There is nothing more infuriating, more exasperating and more powerful than peer pressure. In many ways, it is our most formidable enemy because we have little, if any, control over it. All of our good work talking, educating and advising is immediately rendered null and void by the coaxing of friends to just have a try.

If this happens, try not to be judgemental. Your child doesn’t want to hear you think their friends are reprobates with parents who clearly don’t care about them. It takes such amazing courage to be the only one saying no, so focus on helping them find that confidence.

talk to your kids about vaping
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Don’t forget we were all teenagers once

The good news is we turned out okay didn’t we? And most of us will have tried something before we should have, and maybe without ever telling our parents. Not because we didn’t have a good relationship with them, but because we knew what we’d done was wrong, we knew they’d be disappointed, and we were confident we had enough good sense not to let it get out of hand.

So keep talking about all the difficult subjects. Talk to your kids about vaping, alcohol and drugs and have faith in your child and the decisions they make, and be there to support regardless.

Elaine is the author of two books, I Can’t Tell You Why and Bring Me To Life which are available here: https://bit.ly/3LM3Fwa. She lives in North London with her husband and their two sons and when she’s not writing, she can be found looking harassed on the school run, on the side lines of her sons’ football matches, or singing her heart out with her local branch of Popchoir. You can follow what she’s up to on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter

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