I can't tell you how many times adults told me gruesome stories about what happened to them in childhood. Most of these stories ended with a rocking head, a short, cheerful snicker full of memoirs then words followed: "can't believe were doing this".

Let's face it. The reason you don't believe that was doing this, lies in the fact that you are no longer teenagers. Then, probably, your actions seemed to you something great. I think it's why you're afraid. You know, in adolescence many things are just crazy. We pass sexual development, experience heightened excitability, suffer from acne, chugoshvili, clumsiness, and the list is easy to continue. But along with this there is another place, where there is a rapid process: in our head. I hear parents say they think their teen has something wrong with his head. Yes, you are right, and you have no idea. Some neurons in our brains actually parted and rebuilt in the "adult configuration" in adolescence. Parents can't believe that worked, as teenagers because in a literal sense, they have different brains were arranged!

I call this classical madness of teenage age when we do not think about the consequences, "the Superman syndrome". We feel that we cannot stop, win or hurt us. And I know for you this is the most terrible nightmare when you think how this syndrome is connected with danger of drugs.

I have found that many parents try to neutralize arrogance of teenagers which goes hand in hand with the "Superman syndrome" by using tactics of intimidation during conversations about drugs.

Parents told me a story of how a group of teenagers went blind after he had taken LSD and stared at the sun. I found on the Internet that this old city legend from the 1960s. it was Nothing, just one guy came up with it to intimidate hippie.

Sasha, 16 years old, Mechanicsville, Pennsylvania.

Surely, his parents did not know that the history invented they simply wanted to frighten Sasha and to force it to believe that drugs cause people to harm themselves. In this case we have the reverse process. Sasha can solve now: time occurred nothing, so LSD not dangerous. But true stories can be much worse if they are so awful and unusual that the girl cannot believe that this could happen to her. Tactics of intimidation works only short time, especially with young children. And here teenagers said to me that intimidation stops the action, as soon as a new story told by the friends, will begin to occupy their attention.

Most often I hear about such a scenario: parents tell children about any child, Smoking grass, and then about something awful, occurred because of this, say about gradual loss of mind on all his life. Children unconditionally trust parents and retell the story to your friends. But with age they hear from friends and acquaintances other things about marihuana, and in these cases it does not end with the home for the insane. Most likely, they will tell you about how great the guys are having a great time. So over the years they become disrespectful to refer to intimidating stories and will think of them as about lie as have too much evidence to the contrary from people who began to trust. By the time parents are in the place where it all began (and further), because the child, having heard any other history reminding the first will decide that it again an invention.

"You're not going to take drugs?" is not a conversation

Here about such conversations often told me guys: the classical phrase with which address to them when they are about to leave home for a party.

"You're not going to take drugs?" This phrase seems to me to be worse than useless. The answer is more than a cliché: "of Course, not going to." All this seems a scenario that millions of parents and teenagers beat every day.

Every time I'm going to get out of the house with friends, mother asks me whether I'm going to use drugs. Of course I say "no". It seems that it will become better to feel, telling me this. For me this phrase doesn't mean anything. Even if I was going to take them, did she think that her words could change something?

Benny, 13 pet, Chester, new Jersey.

If you really talked with your teenager about drugs, then there would be no need to ask the same question every time the teenager leaves the house. I understand that you want to receive confirmation and to feel tranquillity on the fact that the child will not do anything bad while he's not home. But very many teenagers whom I met, said that such defective dialogues are simply a substitute of real conversation.