Do you make it easy for your child to drink at home?

Do you have wine before and/or with dinner? Do you order alcohol when out to eat? Does anyone in your family laugh at drunks in movies? You could be sending the unspoken message that you think it’s okay for your child to drink. Children will follow what you do, not what you say. Do you keep alcohol for mixed drinks, wine, or beer handy in the refrigerator or on the kitchen counter? It is fair game for a beginning drinker to pour hard liquor into a plastic container for private drinking at a later date or into a shaded glass to drink right under parents’ noses. Know the exact quantity of alcohol in each bottle or container in your home. Do not take for granted that your child is not consuming alcohol; assume he or she is.

Where else do teens get liquor? Many teens today only attend parties that guarantee access to alcohol. High school students in an unsupervised home or a home where parents offer alcoholic drinking to their children and friends have been common for thirty years. A recent USA Today article quoted a study that stated that 75% of illegal aged drinkers drank mostly at house parties. These house parties are sponsored by do-gooder parents who think they are helping keep drinkers off the street or out from behind the wheel. Though in the 70’s, teenagers were glad to BYOB, alcohol must be available at a party today or no teen bothers to attend. Teens today want it easy. Do you help make it easy without realizing it?

Are you setting a bad example?

A study from Dartmouth Medical School indicates that teens that see drunken behavior in movies and find it funny are more likely to drink themselves. And if teens do begin drinking, they are fifteen more times likely than an adult to become an alcoholic according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. How is it different if a teen sees his parent and finds it laughable? You may also be letting your child know that drinking is a means of escape from problems, a way to deal with bouts of depression. In the impressionable teenage years, children wrestle with academics, peers, athletics, employment, other extracurricular activities, and when coming up short on confidence or mental strength, may seek soothing remedies. Parents can unknowingly model drinking as their own preferred therapy.

Why do teenage girls really drink?

Ask your teen daughter why drink, and the answer may be so she can talk to guys better. But this drinking can lead to behaviors that a teen girl would not normally do. The problem is that she feels good, or so she thinks. When drunk, teens will forget having done embarrassing things, drinking again and again. Drinking that begins in the early teens, creates more vulnerability to immediate alcohol dependency. A teen may begin drinking or become dependent even if there is no family history of alcohol abuse. And also, depression, common in the teen years is likely to lead to alcohol use.

Do you know how dangerous drinking can be?

The danger, of course, is that when alcohol is accessible, and when teens are left to their own supervision, they take chances they normally wouldn’t take. Though drinking begins with a good feeling, it often turns into a bad feeling. Teens go from, “I fit in better this way” to “I feel bad about myself.” Paired with slow or poor judgment and reflexes, this can be fatal. The NIAAA states of teens drinking, “Clearly, then, young adult drinkers pose a serious public health threat, putting themselves and others at risk.” Teen drinkers are at risk for suicide, homicides, and automobile accidents (the top three teenage killers), and increased sexual activity.

What can I do?

Schools can preach against teen drinking. The government can publish studies, and the media can show how gross it is to throw up into a toilet surrounded by filth in order to make a strong statement to youth. But parents can make the biggest difference. Why not tell a child concretely something like what was stated in an article in Alcohol Health in 1995, that the results of autopsies done on patients who have consumed large quantities of alcohol regularly show significantly smaller brains than autopsies on those who didn’t drink much or at all? A teen has the tremendous capacity to minimize how drunk he might have been or what he might have done. So it will take some very strong, factual information to combat that capacity.

Peer and media influence become strong in the teen years. In addition it is unfortunate that white youth, apart from any other culture, as concluded in a 2006 NIAAA Alert, view heavy drinking as a natural teen conduct, something they are unavoidably bidden to try. Even worse, once hopelessly addicted, a teen is more likely than an adult to furiously deny that habit.

There is hope. Parents may make a negative view toward alcohol stick before and during the time children begin to pull away toward peers. “…children begin forming opinions about alcohol at an early age, and they tend to view it negatively,” states M.R. Gilmore in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse. Specific information outlining the physical and mental deficiencies that are certain to result can turn a child away if this technique is repeated periodically through the preteen years. A 2002 study showed 70% of young adults drank alcohol. What would the statistic be today? Parents who are informed can speak on the subject with authority and make the most difference with their own children that they alone know best how to affect. And affect them we do.

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Bibliography

"Alcohol Alert." National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Apr. 2006. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 7 Jan. 2007 .
M.R. Gilmore in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, “Children’s beliefs about drinking.”
Ritter, John. "Adults Penalized for Teen Drinking." USA Today 4 Jan. 2007. 8 Jan. 2007.
Rosenbloom, M.J.; Pfefferbaum, A.; and Sullivan, E.V. Structural brain alterations associated with alcoholism. Alcohol Health Res World 19(4):266-272, 1995.
"Too Much, Too Soon, Too Risky, Mood Swinger." The Cool Spot. 03 Aug. 2006. NIAAA. 03 Aug. 2006 .