Inspira Health Network, Inc.

FALL 2017

Spirit of Women magazine is a national publication presented to women by hospitals and their physicians. The magazine provides up-to-date, evidence-based healthcare information and promotes our hospitals as leaders in women's health excellence.

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30 Practical Parenting E arly and often is the best way to talk to children about the dangers of substance abuse, experts agree. Instead of making drugs and alcohol a taboo topic, brought up only if your children have issues with them, speak to your kids from a young age about how to live a healthy lifestyle and how substance use can interfere with that, doctors and substance abuse experts recommend. Healthy conversations While there's no hard and fast age for first talking to kids about substance abuse, "it's best to start the dialogue before the likelihood of experimentation occurs, which is often in middle school," suggests Dr. Kevin M. Gray, who is a professor and director of child and adolescent psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. He advises parents to frame the discussion of drugs and alcohol as part of a general conversation on healthy habits while their kids are in elementary school. Talking to your kids about By Stephanie Thompson drugs and alcohol

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