Host:What are the signs at home that a teen is drinking?

Judith Welles Cousins: When teen is drinking or teen using what you see typically at home and I am talking about the typical changes in behavior, you see an increase in isolation usually more than is what you would see normally. Again, looking at extremes here. You will see more irritability, more oppositional behavior, less cooperation. What parents tell me frequently is their teenagers are excessively rude, disrespectful, use bad language, a lot of swearing, that kind of thing which is not typical for their particular teen. I mean all teens I think today tend to use language that their parents, I mean their grandparents might not use, but it's again, it's in the extreme, it becomes offensive.

You also might see, a teens sneaking out, sneaking out at night and coming home home late, coming home after curfew, not being communicative, not telling you where they are going or who they are seeing. Those kinds of changes in a teen's behavior is one of the cues or one of the clues that I would say to pay attention to at home.

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