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Parents, Teens and Alcohol...A Dangerous Mix

Parents Playing Cool

Parents, Teens and Alcohol...A Dangerous Mix Mike and Molly throw the best keg parties in town. The beer flows freely as burly varsity football players collect car keys at the door. Teens mill around, shouting over the pounding music, hugging and "high-fiving" the couple. The problem? Mike and Molly graduated high school 25 years ago, and this is their 18-year-old son's summer beer bash.

"These parents think they should be nominated for 'Parents of the Year'.They regard themselves as enlightened crusaders for their teens. They walk the walk and talk the talk," explains Carleton Kendrick, familyeducation.com family therapist. "They're so desperate to be considered cool by their kids that they believe the law doesn't apply to them. They think they're wiser and better than the parents who won't provide alcohol."

"Some parents seek the approval of their teens and want to be looked up to. But even if they just graduated high school, these kids aren't 21 yet and they're not supposed to be drinking, " laments Richard Yoast, director of the American Medical Association's office of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse. "It astounds me that parents think that as long as they are serving the alcohol, they can control their kids and other kids' actions."

When you add drinking to natural teenage curiosity and pleasure seeking, the results can range from lowered self-esteem of a girl who had sex with several guys at a party, throwing up all over someone's carpet and saying something regrettable, to tragedies like diving into a shallow pond, fighting and injuring or killing someone, Kendrick notes. "These parents know that kids are going to drink but they've decided to be the responsible ones and supervise their drinking. Why not pass out condoms and foam and say, 'You're going to do this anyway so why not here? Go have some safe sex and have fun'."

Bargaining With Booze: A Bad IdeaYour teen may whine, "You're the ONLY parent who won't let their kids drink when they're seniors." But the Princeton, New Jersey-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation commissioned a study in 1998 and found that 96 percent of Americans view underage drinking as a significant problem and support measures that would reduce teen drinking. The study also showed that 83 percent of respondents favored punishment of adult providers.

"Underage drinking is a factor in nearly half of all teen automobile crashes. It also contributes to suicides, homicides and fatal injuries, and is a factor in sexual assaults and date rapes," Robert Wood Johnson vice president Nancy Kaufman stated.

The mixed messages that parents send when they "bargain" with teens and allow them to drink at home may actually be to blame for excessive teen drinking. A 1993 study of 15,000 students by the Minnesota-based Johnson Institute, which fights alcohol use at school and work, showed that permissiveness at home affects adolescent choices more than peer pressure. Mothers Against Drunk Driving surveys estimate that when parents "bargain" with their kids and let them drink as long as they promise not to drive, teens are more likely to drive after drinking or be in a car with someone who is drinking. The University of Minnesota's School of Public Health found that teens whose parents or friends' parents provided alcohol for parties were more likely to drink, get into traffic crashes, get involved in violence, and participate in thefts.

Then there's also the sticky problem of setting a bad example for teens who want to do the right thing. "Some kids don't want to drink. They want an out and their parents provide a good excuse. If kids say 'Want some?' and they say, 'No, my parents will kill me," most kids say, "Ok, that's cool, there's more for me!'" says 18-year-old Courtney Michna. "But if parents are saying 'Go ahead, it's perfectly fine to drink,' then what out do they have?"

"Parent-sponsored drunk-fests make it harder for the kids who don't drink and parents who won't let their kids drink. It's almost an inherent challenge that these parents lay down by saying, 'I'm sponsoring this because I think your teen is mature enough to drink responsibly.' Kendrick asserts. "A teen who doesn't drink or whose parents say it's wrong thinks, 'What's wrong with me? Am I the only one who feels this way?' But there's a huge difference between kids experimenting with alcohol and kids drinking with adult approval."

Debby Hutter, a mother of four adolescents, agrees with Kendrick's assessment. "I feel like I would be ostracized if I said my daughters couldn't go to a prom or graduation party because there was drinking going on. My daughters say to me, 'Mom. You just don't get it.' But I don't get how parents -even if they take away the car keys-can justify serving 16, 17 and 18 year olds beer. Kids make bad choices, but what can you do when parents facilitate those choices? It's totally disgusting to watch these kids get drunk!" }]

Dangers of Binge Drinking It's up to parents to remind their teens that too many drinks ingested either accidentally or intentionally can result in alcohol poisoning, and sometimes death, asserts National Family Partnership spokesperson Milton Creagh.

"Alcohol is a drug that numbs the brain. If too much is used, it paralyzes the nerve center in the brain and puts the brain to sleep. When the brain slows down, so does the respiratory system," says Creagh. "When the lungs and heart stop sending oxygen to the brain, breathing stops. Are you going to monitor every teen at your party to make sure there's no binge drinking going on?"

In fact, the Centers for Disease Control reports that 32 percent of high schoolers are binge-drinkers. Yet a poll conducted by the group Drug Strategies showed that only three percent of parents thought their teens had indulged in binge-drinking in the past month.

In 1997 a 16-year-old Orland Park, IL, girl won an $80 bet by chugging a quart of 107-proof alcohol at a party. The high school sophomore drank for six hours before they returned to her best friend's house at 2 AM and fell asleep. They found her dead the next day. Her blood alcohol level was .381, more than four times the amount that is considered "safe."

"'Making it 'safe' for kids to drink is a complete contradiction of terms!" maintains Shepherd Smith, president of the Washington, DC-based Institute for Youth Development. "We have laws regulating use by age because of the lack of physical =and psychological maturity. We've learned that people under the age of 21 have dramatically impaired judgement."

Smith urges parents to rethink just what 'responsible drinking' is for someone under the age of 18. "Parents think THEY did it, so their kids can do it too. After all, parents don't want to say what they did as teens was all wrong." What should you do if you find out that your teen is going to a party where parents are serving alcohol? "You can say, 'You can't go', or you can call the parents and remind them in a non-confrontational way that neighbors often call the police and it's embarrassing and legally costly to parents when they are arrested. When police come to break up a party, everyone is arrested, even those who are not drinking," suggests Smith. "Some parents even call the police and ask them to call the parents and remind them what the consequences could be."

Creagh recounts a party two years ago when parents let their teenager have a drinking party. They collected the car keys and went upstairs. But there was a fight and one of the boys was stabbed to death. The fingerprints of another guest were on a knife and he was charged with murder, yet he never remembered stabbing the boy because he was so drunk.

"Adults who serve alcohol are playing economic Russian Roulette," Creagh maintains. "I say to them, 'If you can't dig deep and find the moral backbone to refuse to serve alcohol to your teenagers and their friends, then at least look at the legal ramifications that could cost you all your money. Maybe that will pound some sense into your head.'"

"Parents are supposed to have arrived at maturity, while kids are supposed to be passing through adolescence on the way to adulthood. You can empathize, but you don't have to join your teen," familyeducation.com's Kendrick asserts. "They need you to point them in the right direction and keep them safe. You're supposed to give them wisdom, not a keg party in the basement."