Some drugs leave an open trail. Cigarette smoke settles in hair, in clothes, and on fingertips, where a parent can smell the evidence. Inhalants often have a peculiar odor, and the containers from which they came are easy to identify. But other drug use is harder to detect.

Parents are understandably reluctant to invade a child’s private space to search for evidence, fearing they will do serious damage to their relationship. But one worried mother steeled herself to read the diary her daughter had left out on her bed. She was shocked by the sexual adventures, but relieved that her daughter had resisted efforts to get her to dry “crystal meth,” an amphetamine derivative. The mother say, “I decided to risk having Kathy furious with me for a while, hoping she would eventually learn to trust me again.” Kathy stormed out of the house and stayed overnight with a friend. “It was the hardest night of my life,” her mother says. “But then she came back and we talked. She finally admitted that it was a relief that I knew what had been going on. Now she doesn’t have to lie anymore, and I don’t have to wonder what she’s hiding.”

If you’ve done everything and still feel you need to go on a search, try to get your child to join you. Surprisingly, as the head of a chemical dependency unit says, “Most times the child will give you the drugs and then the conversation can center on solutions.”

Not every child reacts in this way, however, and drug users are as ingenious as squirrels in hiding their hoard. If you have to search on our own, a police department Youth Squad detective suggests you look first in the obvious places—a workshop or garage where the youngster spends a lot of time, a rec room or the basement, and of course the child’s room. Check your kid’s closet or dresser. Extra shoes are good hiding place; so are jacket pockets and under clothing in the backs of drawers. The stuff may even be hidden in your room, since it is most unlikely you would search there. “Usually,” the detective says, “it’s in a spot the parents walk around often.”

More unusual containers for school and other drugs include stereo speakers, hardbound books that have a hole cut in the pages, stuffed animals, air-conditioner vents, freezers, and “stash cans,” which look like ordinary soft-drink containers but have removable tops and are designed to hide drugs.

Parents can also get a hint about drug usage by paying careful attention to the inscriptions on camp pictures, in yearbooks, and on school programs from dances, plays, and athletic events. What your child’s friends think is noteworthy can alert you to what has been happening. One girl’s yearbook picture was inscribed: “Remember me and all the times we got stoned together.”

The presence of incense, magazines such as High Times, and drug paraphernalia almost certainly are tip-offs. Strange-looking glass shapes may be bongs for smoking marijuana. Small pipes can be used for crack. Small pieces of screen or sink faucet sieves or bits of scouring pads can be used in homemade pipes. Cigars can be hollowed out and filled with marijuana to make “blunts,” a new favorite. One mother found a razor blade stuck in a candle in her son’s room and learned later that the blade was a standard tool for cutting clumps of cocaine and placing the powder into lines to be sniffed.

If you find seeds, powder, or pills you can’t identify, or something you think might be used to take a drug, you might take it to your local police department or youth bureau. Many of them can do simple tests immediately, or they can send the substance away to be analyzed. Policemen and counselors who work with youngsters can also often identify the more common paraphernalia by sight.

The naivete of parents can be astounding, whether they are faced with unfamiliar paraphernalia, physical symptoms, or the evidence of their own eyes. Parents even miss signals the kids themselves are trying to give them. “He was trying to give us a message,” says the mother of a boy who used everything from alcohol to LSD. He told his parents to watch a TV movie about a girl who was addicted to drugs, swore again and again to stop, and finally died. They wondered why he was so insistent, but didn’t connect those events with his experiences. Now that he’s been in treatment, they know—“That was his life, too.”