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4-Year Old Brings Pot to Preschool

by Kimberly Papa (Subscribe to Kimberly Papa's posts)
Mar 12th 2009 1:00PM

72Comments

Filed under: In The News, Weird But True

When a preschooler hears the word "pot" chances are he thinks of that thing mommy makes mac-n-cheese in on the stove. Well, most preschoolers anyway.

Last week, a four-year-old in Tamarac, Florida brought pot with him to school. He casually pulled a plastic bag filled with marijuana out of his backpack and told one of his classmates "this is my brother's weed," according to reports.

His teacher, Iris Dasilva, 45, overhead the little boy and checked his book bag, where she found two more small bags filled with pot. Dasilva then called the Broward Sheriff's Office and the child abuse hotline.

The preschooler initially told investigators his older brother, 21, hid the drugs in the book bag, but later said he found it on a table in his brother's room, the police report said. A Sheriff's Office deputy and an investigator for the Department of Children and Family Services conducted a home visit at the child's residence and found the home clean, in order, with plenty of food, the police report said. It was also reported that the boy's mother told investigators she had never found marijuana in her house and that there was none in the book bag when she packed it.

Before you send your little one off to preschool, you'll probably speak to him about sharing, bullies -- ya know, normal stuff a four-year-old needs to know. But pot? I'm sure we all expect to talk to our kids about drugs at some point, but how young do we really have to start?
"As soon as you can speak to your children, you can start," says Hallie Deaktor, spokesperson for The Partnership for a Drug-Free America. "Preschool is a great time to reinforce how important it is to be healthy. At that age, kids understand that when they feel healthy they can run, jump and play, and when they feel crummy, they can't." Deaktor adds that while a four-year-old shouldn't know the word marijuana, he can understand that there are things people put in their bodies that can make them feel bad -- the same way you would explain to him that some things aren't safe to eat. "If your child is in a situation and he sees something he's never seen before -- like marijuana -- and someone wants him to try it, he won't want to put it in his body because he'll understand it may make him feel bad." The conversations you have with your child about drugs should change as they get older, but starting at a young age and talking about it on a regular basis, will help decrease the likelihood that they'll try drugs when they get older, she adds.

Would you talk to your preschooler about drugs?

Tags: drugs, preschoolers, talk-to-kids-about-drugs

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