Admitting Drug Use is a Big No-No For Parents

There are two schools of thought when it comes to talking about drugs to your kids: admit past usage and regret or deny, deny, deny.  Which way should you go when it comes time to talk to your kids?  The journal Human Communication Research, published a study that discovered that parents who delivered a strong anti-drug message to their children, without admitting to past drug usage were the most successful in getting their kids to develop their own anti-drug attitudes.  Conversely, it turns out that the parents who decided to share their own drug experiences, including the very negative ones, ended up inadvertently watering down the anti-drug message to their kids.

Jennifer Kam, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the study's lead author explains, "Even when the parents say they regretted using drugs, the fact that the parents used them at all undermines the negative point they're trying to make."