TEST DOING DRUGS WITH
PAUL DILLON

"Every conversation I have with my 15 year-old at the moment ends in a fight! Apparently I don't understand anything about the world, my rules are completely different to every other parent's and, as I'm usually told as the door slams, I just want to ruin her life!" As tempting as it must be sometimes to just turn and walk away and think this is just all too hard when this kind of thing happens, it is incredibly important that parents continue to try and work hard to maintain a dialogue with their son or daughter during the teen years. I've just pulled this quote out of one of many emails I've had over the years  - I can't tell you how many times I've been told by mums and dads that their wonderful, communicative and co-operative teen went up to bed one night and was somehow replaced by aliens with a 'pod person' - an adolescent that they now simply don't recognize! If their child did actually decide to converse it was usually to argue

Alcohol and sport are bound together tightly in this country and, to be honest, it doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon. I remember going to a conference many years ago and hearing from an expert in the area that it took 25 years from the day Bob Hawke announced that tobacco sponsorship of sport would end to the day it finally did, but if a Prime Minister did the same thing around alcohol today, it could take close to 40 years to disentangle the two! Pretty amazing stuff but not really surprising ... Participation in sport is regarded as a protective factor for young people when it comes to alcohol and other drugs. It's a healthy activity, keeps them busy and 'off the streets', as well as offering them a sense of 'connectedness', particularly when it comes to team sports. It is also a way of parents maintaining a positive relationship with their child - e.g., driving them to training and to the actual sporting events, showing an interest in wh

One of my major messages to parents this year has been the importance of understanding why young people do the things they do during adolescence. You can sit with your teen, carefully explaining your rules and boundaries and tell them what will happen should those rules be broken and they may still walk away and, within minutes, do the 'wrong thing'. It is at this point that you may start to question your parenting and also the intelligence of your teen ... Put simply, teens make 'dumb choices' because of their developing brain. The adolescent brain is far less developed than we once thought, with male brains developing much later than females (no surprise there!). When we make decisions as an adult, we rely on parts of the brain that are amongst the last to fully develop, i.e., the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and promotor cortex. These sections deal with reasoned thinking and judgment, as well as learning and memory (remembering past experiences) and a range of othe

The evidence is pretty clear that if you want to do your very best to keep your child safe through the teen years there is a simple parenting formula to follow: know where your child is know who they're with, and know when they'll be home This involves a lot of work. It takes time and energy to check up on what your teen has told you, calling other parents to find out whether they're going where they say they're going and making sure they do what they say they're going to ... but if that's what it takes to ensure your child comes home in one piece, I'm pretty sure most would agree it's worth the effort! As I say in my parent sessions, sometimes when I end my talks with these three simple tips I can see some people in the audience who look like I have just stabbed them in the heart. When I have approached them afterwards and asked them what the problem was (because there was so a problem!), they turn around and say "But if I did those things and chec