November 2011

1. My 6th grade daughter wants to “go out” with a boy in her school, but I think she’s too young. However, I don’t want her to feel she has to sneak around. I’m just not sure how to handle this.
While there are always exceptions, most 6th graders do not go out [...]

Parents who allow their teens to have friends over to drink, thinking it’s a safe way to keep them off the roads, may be surprised to find they are subject to liability laws that make them vulnerable to lawsuits, fines and jail time.
Parents in some states can be liable even if they were not aware [...]

Join Together: What trends are you seeing in adolescent abuse of synthetic drugs? Which designer drugs are becoming most widely used?
Dr. Lee: Most often, Hazelden doesn’t see young people who are addicted primarily to synthetic drugs, but we do see a lot of experimentation. Of synthetic drugs, marijuana seems to be the most popular agent, [...]

September 2011

1.  My ex-husband is a heavy smoker and when our kids come home from a weekend with him they are disgusted by how they and their clothes smell – they’re more & more reluctant to spend time with him because of it.  When I mention it to him, he just scoffs at the notion. [...]

August 2011

1.  We have two sons – 17 & 12 – the older is constantly ranting about his belief that drugs (especially marijuana) should be legalized.  He goes on and on about how using drugs doesn’t hurt anyone and how smoking weed is better for you than drinking, etc., etc.  I’m worried his attitude will [...]

July 2011
1.   Our 14yr old daughter is becoming very difficult to handle.  She’s verbally abusive to everyone in the family and has been physical with me on a couple of occasions-nothing major just a shove.  Her younger brother is actually becoming fearful of her.  Not sure how to deal with this.  We’ve talked about [...]

So says the latest analysis conducted by the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which notes almost one out of 11 alcohol radio ads in 75 markets across the nation in 2009 failed to comply with the industry’s voluntary standard for the placement of advertising.
The [...]

Advertising effectively promotes alcohol brands to teens, researchers from Dartmouth Medical School and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found in a study published in this month’s issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
Dartmouth pediatricians Susanne Tanski, Auden McClure and James Sargent found a correlation between alcohol companies’ annual advertising expenditures [...]

June 2011
1.   Our 16yr old daughter has started dating an 18yr old “boy” who we hear has been known to drink and use drugs. Although our daughter exhibits no symptoms or behaviors suggesting she’s using too, we are anxious and worried about how to handle this situation. What should we do?
You have good reason [...]

Teenagers who are involved in sports or exercising are less likely to use drugs and smoke cigarettes compared with teens who are not as active, a new study suggests. However, Reuters reports that the study found high school athletes on teams drank more alcohol than their classmates who weren’t on a team.
Data from [...]