How to Talk to Your Kids About Weed

This article first appeared in the Kids & Cannabis edition of Fat Nugs Magazine, published December 2025

Last issue, I wrote an article about how to talk to your grandparents about weed and shared how I approach the delicate subject of plant medicine to a generation with prohibition in their DNA.

It only feels natural to write about how to talk to kids about weed in the pediatric issue. If you’re new, I’m a cannabis and psychedelic nurse educator and founder of EntheaCare, where we empower healing and end the stigma with plant medicines. We have award-winning hemp products, and I speak globally on these topics.

Right up there with the birds-and-the-bees talk, conversations about cannabis can be some of the most influential ones you have with your kids.

As a cannabis nurse educator and mother, I’ve had the opportunity to have some of these conversations with kids of various ages, and here’s how I approach it and what I’ve learned in the process.

How to Talk To Your Kids About Weed, By Age

The Littles

Disclaimers: I completely recognize that speaking about this to children is a privilege and that not everyone may have this same freedom. My boys are 6 and 9, and while I’ve taught high schoolers about cannabis, I recognize parenting high schoolers who are exposed to cannabis is a completely different animal I have yet to encounter. I also have the blessing of their doctor, who defers to me to medicate them appropriately, and I know that’s rare.

Here’s to hoping I’m doing something right in the early years so that the animal isn’t so beastly in a few years.

Since I was relatively late to the cannabis game, my boys were about 2 and 5 when they were first exposed, while I was getting a master’s degree in the subject. I would talk about cannabis all the time, show them pictures, and allow them to smell fresh flower. Calling it “cannavis,” they would have a contest to see who could draw the best fan leaves and tell their class that “Mom likes cannavis and mushrooms” for school projects.

Cannabinoids are like Windex in My Big Fat Greek Wedding at our house. Skin rash? Topical CBD. Growing pains? Oral CBD. Anxiety? Oral CBG. Influenza A and haven’t eaten in two days? A piece of a low-dose THC+CBD gummy. Head injury? Lots of oral CBD and CBG. Tummy ache? Topical and oral CBG.

They used to roll their eyes when I offered it, and now they ask for it, because they know it works. Of course, we only use the whole plant full-spectrum goodness from our own product line.

If you have young kids and use cannabis, I invite you to talk about it openly with them. Explain what you’re consuming and why, just like you would do with any medicine. Release your own shame around it and don’t hide it; otherwise, they learn that it’s a shameful practice that they need to hide. If you have shame around it, maybe it’s time to unpack that.

Of course, don’t expose them to secondhand smoke or leave your edibles open and accessible, but normalize it and teach them to respect it as the medicine that it is.

Ending the stigma starts here!

High Schoolers

Over the years, I’ve had the really cool opportunities to give some guest lectures to high school students about cannabis. What I teach them is fairly similar to what I teach adults:
  • A basic introduction to the endocannabinoid system, using a PBS video with Raphael Mechoulam.
  • What can happen if the ECS isn’t functioning properly (like chronic pain), and what can make it malfunction (like heavy THC use).
  • The cannabinoid family tree and how the plant makes more than just THC.
  • What THC, CBD, and CBG can be helpful for (and that CBG is the GOAT).
  • How THC works in the brain and how chronic use can negatively impact the developing brain in various ways.
  • How cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS) can and has happened to real kids their age, and how it ruined their lives.
  • How to consume responsibly if they’re in a situation where consuming is an option.
  • That cannabis isn’t the gateway drug, trauma is.
I told them to ditch the carts, be a weed snob, avoid daily use, and care about what they put in their bodies. The smoke shop crap isn’t it.

Talking to your own teen about weed can be completely different, but taking a harm reduction approach is usually most helpful.

Harm reduction means teaching them to make smart decisions when curiosity outweighs caution. It means that smoking a joint may be safer than drinking alcohol at a party. That getting behind the wheel after either is a bad idea. And of course, to start low and stay low.

Self-medicating on a daily basis with a vape pen is a different story from smoking a joint every once in a while. As a teen, heavy daily use can have detrimental effects, and it’s something I’m vehemently against. When teens are self-medicating, there’s always an underlying reason, and as parents, it’s our responsibility to understand the why before correcting it. I promise you, merely taking away the weed isn’t solving the problem.

They’re almost always self-medicating to help with their anxiety, depression, focus, or just to feel better, because high school can totally suck. Those are all valid! But high THC can cause more harm than good in the long run, so I’m team CBD and CBG for managing these issues, in addition to therapy, movement, nutrition, breathwork, meditation, and all things holistic whenever possible. Microdosing mushrooms will one day be on the table as well. One day.

Talk To Your Kids About Weed

Not talking to your kids about weed doesn’t keep them from being exposed to it. It keeps them from being smart about it. I don’t know about you, but I want my kids to be the ones that other kids come to for accurate information, and the ones who turn their noses up at distillate and shitty flower.

Cannabis use will be normalized for the next generation, and I fear it will be normalized to the point of overuse (something I see often). Education = empowerment. Talk to your kids about weed. Normalize it, and normalize responsible consumption.

Most importantly, model responsible consumption, because even if you don’t think they’re watching, smelling, or paying attention, they are. The way you show up becomes the standard they’ll carry into every room you’re not in.

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