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CROTON-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. The Croton Community Coalition presented a talk about parent-teen communication at the Croton Free Library on Tuesday evening. About two dozen community members and a dozen student members of the Teen Leadership Council attended.
What to Do When the Conversation With Your Kid Backfires centered on advice given by Wendy Kaufman, CEO of Balancing Lifes Issues. Kaufman, an Ossining-based life coach, said about parents, What were trying to change is this avoidance behavior.
We have parents who still think that if I talk to my kids about sex, drugs, alcohol, theyre going to go out and do those things. Im going to put the idea in their head, Kaufman said.
Wayne Francis, leader of the federally funded coalition, said, We felt this was a crucial conversation to start equipping people with some very practical and pragmatic solutions.
The key to having these conversations, they both said, is to simply begin talking.
You may mess up, you may stumble, you may get upset, but you have to keep talking to your kid, Kaufman said.
The coalition was funded with a $125,000 grant from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. An anonymous April 2010 survey given to Croton-Harmon students in seventh, ninth and 11th grades showed that Croton teens have a rate of smoking marijuana as high as 15 percent above the national average. The same study found a lower use of tobacco than the national average.
Daria Wells, a Croton-Harmon High School senior and member of the Teen Leadership Council, said, A lot of teens think its cool to do drugs and alcohol because they think if you do drugs and alcohol, youll fit in. She and another member of the council, Meagan Gallagher, agreed that, more people are interested in it because they want to better themselves.
Data have been collected for a 2012 update on the anonymous PRIDE survey given to Croton-Harmon teens. Francis said the group is still analyzing the data, and hopes to release the results in the coming months.
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