When children reach adolescence, many parents have the same concern: how do we prevent our child from drinking, smoking or trying other drugs? But these thoughts should concern parents from a very early age and not when it reaches the age of 15 or 16 – otherwise it’s already too late, according to adolescence expert Matthias Jung.

A research group from the USA believes that it is beneficial to give the impression to the child from earlier that the parents are supervising him. In such cases, teenagers often do not go into the process of consuming alcohol or drugs at all. “Some parents think that kids are going to drink or try drugs anyway,” explains team leader William Pelham of the University of California, Berkeley. “But this is not the case. Parents can make a difference.”

The fear of being “caught in the act”

Until now, many believed that child surveillance works because, when parents find out that their child consumes such substances, they punish him, for example by taking away his cell phone or forbidding him to leave the house for a period of time. However, as the relevant American analysis shows, which was also published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, children avoid trying drugs only because of the fear of being “caught in the act”.

Pelham’s team conducted a survey of 4,500 children and adolescents aged 11 to 15 from various regions of the US, who were asked about their drug use and whether it was something their parents were aware of. . And several participants admitted that although they had the possibility or even planned to try drugs, they did not do so precisely because they were afraid that their parents would fight them. Without this deterrent, drug use among respondents would have been estimated to be 40% higher, according to the researchers.

Matthias Jung does not doubt the influential role of parents. However, as the expert points out, “fear is also a kind of punishment. For a short period of time it can contribute to the non-use of drugs by teenagers, but the latter do not come to an awareness through this process.” Ideally the issue of drug use should be discussed within families many years earlier.

Parents should talk to their children early on

“In these conversations parents can talk to their children about their own related negative experiences, as well as about the problems that a relative has faced,” Jung says. For a 15-year-old, however, such discussions do not cause much impression.

“At an older age, pressure only causes a reaction.” The same applies to many topics, from drug use to emptying the dishwasher: “If I want my child to empty the dishwasher, I have to ask him to do it from the age of 7 – if I start I’m telling him when he’s 15, then I’ll collect the biggest possible resistance.”

Parental advice has a positive effect

Another research team from the University of Illinois finds, however, that although children are said to often simply reject well-intentioned advice, it is still important in managing the problems a young person faces.

The team’s researchers followed the conversations between about 100 elementary school children and their mothers about the children’s problems at school, recording both the mothers’ advice and the 11-year-olds’ reactions. The aim was to then assess how the advice would affect these children in their transition to secondary school. “We wanted to understand exactly what is going on in the conversations between parents and children,” says Kelly Tu, head of the research team.

Although the children did not seem to fully accept their mothers’ suggestions and words of encouragement, often responding with expressions such as “maybe” and “I don’t know”, this advice helped the children to adapt more easily to the new school environment a few months later.

From a certain age onwards, of course, “children mature and want to make their own decisions”, as Tou explains. And then their spontaneous reaction will be to resist or protest. Nevertheless, the advice of the parents still has a positive effect on the way in which the young people deal with the given problem.

The great importance of trust

The greatest praise for parents is when their child calls them in a situation that has overwhelmed them. “It’s 1 o’clock in the evening, the kid is somewhere drunk – and then he gets his parents to help him. That trust is what it’s all about, in this case the parents have done everything right,” emphasizes Jung.

The foundation for such a trusting relationship is that there is affection and love between parents and children. “To create the feeling that “they listen to me, they understand me””. In…helicopter parents, that doesn’t happen often. “This type of parent treats the child as a kind of project with the achievement of goals in focus.” From the outside, the relationships of such parents with their children seem fantastic, but at the same time, the children do not become self-sufficient, they do not feel that they can create and achieve things on their own.

Helicopter parents monitor their child even in their emotional world, for example even indicating who they can associate with – saying e.g. “you can meet so-and-so” or “he is from a good family”. “The children of these parents don’t learn to appreciate what they like,” Jung says. “And that’s exactly what they’re trying to find out 20 years later doing psychotherapies.”

Children being able to try things and make mistakes sometimes is very important. “A bad haircut, an unpleasant experience, these are all also part of the path to adulthood,” concludes Jung.

Edited by: Giorgos Passas