Q I found some ‘weed’ in my 15-year-old son’s jeans pocket when I was putting on the wash.

I didn’t even know what it was at first, but I was suspicious mostly because it was in a little plastic bag. When I confronted him with it, he didn’t even deny it but said that it wasn’t his, he had just been asked to mind it for a friend. I don’t know whether to believe him or not. I’m terrified that it was his and that he is smoking this stuff now and I don’t know how to talk to him about it.

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Answer: The discovery of your child with illegal drugs of any kind rates highly on most parents’ fear scale. We dread the thought that they might be using drugs, that they might get addicted to drugs, that they might get lost in a crowd of drug using peers, or in serious cases that they may get caught up in the drug trade to pay for their own use of drugs.

So, I think it is OK to be shocked and upset to find the weed in your son’s pocket. At the very least, the fact that he has weed, whether he owns it or not, is worrisome. And it certainly deserves several conversations. Prior to having those conversations, however, you might want to process some of your own feelings about your discovery, separately. When talking to him, you want to be able to be clear headed and that means being able to regulate your own feelings.

In further preparation for talking to him more about the weed you found, you might like to inform yourself, not just about the nature of the different drugs that are out there, but also the kind of culture, and the attitudes of his peers towards different kinds of drugs.

That knowledge will help you to understand his perspective a little more. It might help you to understand how he would feel comfortable to hold someone else’s drugs, or how he might consider actually using them himself (as he may be).

Then when it comes to talking about your discovery, and what it means, you can focus on having an open discussion about it. Discussing it with him aims to get him to think critically about his behaviour and to look more comprehensively at the potential outcomes of it. It doesn’t simply scold him, criticise him, punish him or label him as bad. It is a genuine attempt to see his point of view and to clearly articulate your own.

Your son may not see all the risks that you can, or he may have a different attitude to those risks. Open discussion can prompt him to see things differently. Open discussion may also challenge you to change your views, or your attitudes, and it might allow you to think differently about his behaviour too.

The main thing you need him to understand is that you are worried about him, because of the drugs, and that you may not be able to protect him from all of the consequences that come with those drugs. Equally, if he knows of your concern it may help him to make wiser choices to avoid the trouble in the first place.

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