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Is My Child Using Drugs? How to Spot the Early Warning Signs

The teenage years are delicate years. Typically, teenagers move away from listening to their parents or seeing their parents as the ultimate authority. Beyond that, they view their parents as people who do not understand them or what they are going through, so they look to their peers for validation. Having a conversation with a teenager can be difficult, but this is not unusual and should be expected. Mood swings and emotional outbursts are common in teenagers as well.

Parents often wonder how they can know if their teenager is using drugs when his or her behavior is so erratic under normal circumstances. Parents should look for sudden changes in a teenager’s appearance, hairstyle and friendships, especially if the new friends are very different from the teenager’s previous peers. Pay attention to the pictures teenagers hang on their walls because they could indicate a connection with drug use. They will not be putting up pictures of drug paraphernalia, of course, but rather they will have pictures of people they look up to who are associated with the drug community or with using drugs. The appearance of drug paraphernalia, such as rolling papers, is something else parents should look out for at home.

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What is bullying? What is the difference between aggressive behavior and bullying?

The term bullying is used frequently, and while there certainly is a great deal of bullying happening, it is important to know that bullying is a very specific type of aggressive behavior. Very often children fight over things. Two children want the same ball on the playground, or two children want to be first down the slide. This is fighting between two peers of equal power. It is not bullying. It may be behavior that we want to work on, but it isn’t bullying.

Bullying is the deliberate abuse of power to harm another person. There are three critical components in that definition, so let’s consider each of them:

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