News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Allowing your teenager to drink alcohol with you may actually backfire as an approach to teaching responsible drinking, according to a new study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

• Dr. Haske van der Vorst studied 428 Dutch families.
• He found that the more teenagers were drinking at home with the parents, the more they drank outside of the home.
  
• The study also found that teens who drink with their parents or on their own increase their risk for developing alcoholism.

"The thinking is that if parents show good behavior -- in this case, modest drinking-- the child will copy it. Another assumption is that parents can control their child's drinking by drinking with the child," said Dr. van der Vorst. However, he said, the results of his new study and several previous ones indicate that the opposite is true.

Dr. van der Vorst advice to parents is that they should try to postpone the age at which their children start drinking.

Labels: parenting tips, alcohol

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Helen Jung's husband works for a beer company. They both like to unwind with a beer at the end of the day.

But Jung, a reporter for The Oregonian, has noticed that her two-year-old has added the word beer to her vocabulary, and it has her wondering if shes setting a bad example. She addressed her conundrum in a Jan. 25 article:

Are we serving as a bad example by having a pint or two each night? Are there any downsides to just simply unwinding with a drink?

I talked about this with Bonnie Nagel, an assistant professor in OHSU's departments of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience. ...

"If parents are going to drink alcohol in front of their kids, it's really important to educate their kids about how drinking during adolescence is much more damaging to their brains than to adults' (brains), " said Nagel. "Having drinks during that time can alter the course of development." ...

Explain to your child that there are serious negative outcomes -- developmentally and socially -- from drinking at a young age. Not only could your child be hurting their longterm decision-making and memory, but he or she could find themselves in a dangerous situation.

Labels: parental influence, alcohol

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In 1989, the Girl Scouts conducted a landmark study on the overall attitudes and behaviors of young people. They conducted a follow-up study this year, and found that, in general, today's kids are headed in the right direction.

The blog Ms. Twixt provided the following details from the study, which is scheduled to be published in December:

• 62 percent of surveyed teens say they would not cheat on a test (compared to 48 percent in 1989)
• 58 percent of surveyed teens say they would refuse an alcoholic drink if offered one at a party (compared to 46 percent in 1989)
• 18 percent say smoking is okay if the person finds it enjoyable (compared to 27 percent in 1989)
• 76 percent say they will give regularly to charity (compared to 63 percent in 1989)

Labels: tobacco, alcohol, research, morals, values

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A new study appearing in the February issue of the journal Addiction indicates that the cost of alcoholic beverages has a direct effect on the amount of alcohol that people consume. The study, conducted by the University of Florida, College of Medicine, analyzed 112 studies across four decades in order to document this relationship. Alexander C. Wagenaar, Ph.D., a professor of epidemiology and health policy research at the University of Florida, College of Medicine, and the senior author of the study, commented on the findings:

"Results from over 100 separate studies reporting over 1000 distinct statistical estimates are remarkably consistent, and show without doubt that alcohol taxes and prices affect drinking. ... When prices go down, people drink more, and when prices go up, people drink less."

(Source: www.sciencedaily.com)

Labels: alcohol, taxes. underage-drinking

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Sex and alcohol use are now second-rate worries among parents, a new study finds. Parents in the United States now say their number one concern is that their children spend too much time in front of TV and computer screens.

A study by Insight Research Group funded by a San Francisco organization that monitors the effect of media on children found that 57% of parents in their survey were concerned about the time spent in computer, television and video activities. Fewer parents (45%) worried about sex and alcohol.

Labels: teens, sex, alcohol

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State lawmakers in Illinois are pushing for higher fines and prison time for parents who provide teenagers with alcohol and a place to drink it. Parents who allow their teens and their friends a place to party will face tougher penalties if state representatives and police agencies get their way.

"'It's not acceptable for parents to allow teenagers to break the law in their own homes,' said state Sen. Susan Garrett, a Lake Forest Democrat and mother of two. 'Parents might think that as long as teenagers are at home, they're in a safe environment. But there's nothing to keep those teens from leaving, there's nothing to keep them off the roads.'"

Throughout the state, and the country, high profile alcohol-related deaths involving teens who have been given alcohol by adults has brought the issue to the forefront. Read more online from the Daily Herald.

Labels: alcohol, parents, laws

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In a tough April 28 editorial entitled "Adults Required," the Worcester (MA) Telegram & Gazette criticized an area couple for allowing underage drinking to occur on their property -- and encouraged other parents to remain vigilant against the scourge of teen alcohol abuse:

Ronald and Susan Smits were arrested Friday night after police responded to their home, where they found one intoxicated teen wandering the yard, others sprinting into the woods, and dozens more in the basement. Some of the teens were drunk. Beer cans covered the top of the pool table. ...

Any of the dozens of young people present might have become the subject of a tragic headline the next morning. Responsible parents and homeowners cannot turn a blind eye to underage drinking.

It’s now up to the courts to remind the Smits of the responsibilities they seem to have forgotten. For thousands of other parents in Massachusetts, this incident should act as a reminder that supervision and saying no to your child is an essential part of being a parent, and one of the best ways to ensure that he or she makes it safely to adulthood.

Labels: teenagers, alcohol, substance_abuse

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Women over age 30 who abuse alcohol while pregnant are more likely to give birth to babies with fetal alcohol syndrome and attention deficit problems, according to a new study from Wayne State University.

• Professor Lisa Chiodo tested 462 African-American children at age seven years old.
• If their mothers were 30 or older when they were born, and if their mothers were binge drinkers during pregnancy, their children were more likely to have problems paying attention on the test.
• These children were also more likely to have been born with fetal alcohol syndrome.

"It is very important and women are warned that with increasing maternal age, fetuses may be more severely affected by alcohol exposure, even when the mother's alcohol intake during pregnancy has not increased from previous pregnancies, and even if prior pregnancies and older children appear to have been unaffected," said Dr. Chiodo.

The study appears in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
 

Labels: alcohol, fetal alcohol syndrome

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