Host: If parents are little suspicious that kids behaviors change and get little secretive, they are concerned about the pocket money. They could be getting into some drugs or something. How should we approach this problem?
Guest: Also a common question that I see in the office, is my teenager seems to be very, very different than he or she was years ago. The quick answer is to discuss the issues with the pediatrician. Certainly a pediatrician who is expert in dealing with development which is in children and teenagers is the first stop. When you suspect that your adolescent is behaving differently, there is a whole spectrum of things we should think of. Everything from normal adolescence. It is normal for an adolescent as their bodies change and as they start growing up. They want to pull away from the family and be more secretive and have their best friends and their best friend is the person that they speak to all the time.
As opposed to the young child, who their best friend is, the parents or the guardian. So if you suspect that your adolescent is behaving differently, the pediatrician could help you make that decision of whether this is normal as part of puberty, part of growing up or is it indicative of an underlying problem. Certainly things like substance of use, tobacco use, alcohol use are things that we worry about with all of our patients and the pediatrician can be very very helpful in dealing with those issues.
Host: A new type of drug abuse, which is they are go into the nuts and chats and they take virtually anything, parents could take, so it would be wise for parents to be very, very careful if they keep in house.
Guest: I think it's very, very careful for adults to keep medicines away from all children. We know that when your child is two years of age, they can get those child-proof bottles open, much faster than we can as adults and we don't think twice, when we discuss the issue of medications around young children. But certainly as children grow up, we make the assumption that since they know the stove is hot, that they know that medications can kill. We start becoming a little less worried about safety issues and I think an important issue that's coming up for adolescents right now as you mentioned is prescription drug abuse.
Teenagers more and more are being -- are having access to the medicine cabinet and they can open those bottles very quickly and start getting high and it's not the drugs that we are historically get worried about. You know Marijuana, cocaine, heroin that we have to worry about now, in addition we have to worry about the prescription drugs that are available in everyone's cabinet.
Host: Thank you very much.
