Your kid doesn't need a friend........

So, you want to be a friend to your kid??? Forget that people!! This is one of the biggest mistakes a parent can make. Your kid has an entire school full of "potential friends" and only two (or one) parent.

I know, some of you are worried that you will be a hypocrite if you punish your kid for smoking weed......... cause you did and you turned out all right, right? Believe me, treating your teenagers experimental use of marijuana as no big deal is a BAD idea. That isn't to say that you need to send them to some drug rehab either. But drugs today are not the same as they were 20 years ago. I personally began smoking pot at the age of 13 and that lead to a 15 year addiction to a variety of very scary and dangerous drugs. By the time I was finishing high school I was addicted to opiates, meth, alcohol and Xanax-which is the most dangerous drug of them all in my opinion but we'll talk about that another time.

So what should you do? Well, if they are still living under your roof you have a right to demand that they not use or bring drugs into your home. Yes, that means searching their stuff. But be reasonable here. I am not saying that they don't have a right to some privacy and this is where you have to decide where to draw the line for yourself. I hate to idea of grounding because that is how my parents punished me for everything from bad grades to coming home so drunk I couldn't walk at age 15!! And it was quite ineffective. But you have to make your kid suffer and I do mean "suffer" some kind of consequences everytime they do wrong. Just bear in mind that when you ground them you may be grounding yourself.