AMARILLO, TEXAS -- A follow-up to that story from Monday, where two third graders in Roswell, New Mexico were caught smoking pot in a school bathroom after school.
We wondered how and when parents should talk to their kids about drugs? Drug use is an ongoing fight that parents across the nation continue to deal with as their children get older. But some parents ask themselves when is the appropriate age to start talking to their kids?
"When they're about three years old, as is age appropriate, so you wouldn't tell a three year old about methamphetamines necessarily but just like you were going to tell the three year old not to touch the Windex or drink things that are poisonous, you're going to kind of start that conversation and just let it evolve in to a family culture," said Melynn Huntley, Safe Schools Healthy Students Director.
It's an easier conversation to start when your kids are younger, but Huntley says, as they get older, it may get a little more difficult to make the conversation relative to them.
So find a magazine or newspaper and show them an example of people getting busted with some kind of controlled substance, but she says there is one mistake that you don't want to make.
"Don't make your initial conversations about them, make it about the substance."
And she points out, no matter how early you start talking to your kids about drugs, just be sure that its not a one time conversation.
"As they get older the information that you give them needs to be more in depth and more sophisticated."
A conversation that Huntley says should keep on going until they've moved out of your household.
On facebook, we asked you at what age parents should talk to their kids about drugs?
Heath wrote -- Third grade obviously since two kids were caught smoking in the bathroom by the principal -- crazy.
Sheila wrote: I agree, third or fourth, definitely! I teach and it starts around eight to ten a lot!!
This from Jaime: We started talking to our boys around the age of four. The sooner the better. Which this was the same time they asked "where did babies come from?"
And from Guadalupe: I tell my kids everyday. they're ages five, six, and eight and it's never too early to teach your children.
What do you think is the best way to approach the subject with your children?
