Parental habits that discourage drug or alcohol use

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Parental habits that discourage drug or alcohol use

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There are several habits that you can get into with your teen that will help you notice if they are using alcohol or drugs, or notice if they are starting to get in trouble. One of the most basic ones is to have dinner together and make sure you are spending time with them, talking. That means, not having cell phones with text message conversations going on, not watching the TV or reading; but sitting down and talking to each other. Another thing is, before your teen goes out, you should know their friends. When they were little you did this, but as they get older, there is often a tendency of parents to let them go out with people that they don't know. Don't let them get into a car and take a ride with somebody who hasn't first talked to you about safe driving and seatbelts. It will make your teen embarrassed. It may make your teen annoyed with you, but it may also save their lives. Another thing that helps is when they come home, it's not acceptable to say, "Hey mom, I'm home," and go down to the basement or wherever and disappear. You want to make them come into the room and kiss you goodnight. The advantage of that is, you get to see them cross the room. You get to smell them. You can tell whether they have balance. You can see things, very unobtrusively, in the act of kissing them goodnight.

View Michael Dennis, PhD's video on Parental habits that discourage drug or alcohol use...

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Michael Dennis, PhD

Psychologist

Michael Dennis, PhD, is a senior research psychologist and Director of the Global Appraisal of Individual Needs (GAIN) coordinating center at Chestnut Health Systems in Normal, Illinois. Over the past 25 years his primary area of research has been to better understand and manage addiction and recovery over the life course. This includes multiple clinical trials to compare the effectiveness of adolescent treatment approaches and recovery support services, longitudinal studies with adolescents, adults and older adults to understand the predictors of entering and sustaining recovery, and creating the Global Appraisal of Individual Needs (GAIN) coordinating center for teaching evidenced based assessment to support clinical decision making at the individual level and program evaluation. He has multiple awards for moving the field from science to practice, promoting diversity through practice based evidence and bringing more people into the field.

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