Teaching Alcohol Use to Teens

Let’s talk about alcohol use and raising children to be responsible drinkers.  I know that heroin addictions and deaths are getting a lot of press, but alcohol addiction claims the most lives here in the States.  

Children of parents who are heavy and inappropriate uses of alcohol often become heavy and inappropriate user of alcohol themselves.  Heavy daily use, frequent drunkenness, DUIs, and other alcohol fueled issues and dramas,  like that punched out wallboard,  all contribute to the most misuse of alcohol by the heavy drinker’s children as they trek into adulthood  The work of these parents is to get sober and then recovered.  Sobriety and recovery are two different things.  Sober is just not drinking, but life is pretty much the same, angry, dramatic or disappeared.  Recovery is about building a different life, not centered on alcohol, and thus becoming a person of integrity and improving social and family relationships.

The next group are parents who do not drink, ever.  No alcohol in their house.  These people either cannot drink themselves, do not care for it, have lousy memories of alcohol in the family, or have religious objections.    This group of parents produce teens and adults that do not know how to drink.  In college and young adulthood these young men and women are the second heaviest users of alcohol.   Which exactly is NOT what these parents want for their children.

 The third category of parents are the parents who use alcohol moderately and mostly in a celebratory way. (and Dear Mrs. Web does not mean Yay!  The sun came up!  Yay! The sun went down kinds of celebrations, either!). 

 These moderate-use parents talk to their children  and teens about alcohol use and misuse.  They disparage drunkenness and point out that responsible alcohol use is a hallmark of maturity.  They show their children how to drink, for there is nothing sadder than an alcohol-poisoned teen explaining that he thought that 3 to 5 water glasses of vodka were normal party doses. 

Teaching moderate drinking is providing children with an occasional glass of wine cut with water or beer with dinner.  Yes, I said children, for if you think that a cram course of appropriate alcohol use at age 17 just in time for the Prom is going to cut it, you are wrong.  You want your information and attitudes in their little brains WAY before the culture and their friends make inroads.  You will offer them the occasional drink at home, perhaps once a month or so.  You will talk to them about appropriate amounts in a drink and about prudent drinking, which is not more that one or two appropriately-sized drinks in an evening.  You will have champagne at celebrations.   You will have non-alcoholic beverages available to those who cannot/will not drink and explain to the children and teens, that alcohol is not for everyone.  Older children need to understand appropriate times for drinking and discuss what to do if one finds that alcohol controls them.  Discussing in a matter-of-fact way that there are some people that just cannot drink, just like there are people who cannot walk tightropes because of balance issues, or become bee-keepers because of an allergy.  Not all people can do all things.  Those young people need to be taught their other options and how not to drink in social settings and find lives without alcohol. 

 Parents with alcohol problems or a family history of alcoholism have a responsibility to talk to their children and teens about that history and the genetic influences of alcoholism.  Parents who cannot drink or serve their children alcohol have a responsibly to tell their young teens what normative drinking looks like.  It is a life skill that they may never use, but they need to know… like changing a tire…Dear Mrs. Web has never done it, bless you Triple A… but she knows all the details.

 So, parents who are heavy users and parents who do not use alcohol both have children at risk for heavy drinking as teens and adults as well as alcoholism.  Moderate using parents who are modeling  responsible use of alcohol have children with more control, and less chance of alcoholism in their futures.