Q: But most kids seem to drink. How much is too much?
A: This is where I lose most of the audience: any at all. The problem is one of tactics. If you tell your kid, “A couple of beers is okay,” then why not four? Why not 16? Once you cross that threshold of acceptability you’ve got a big problem. The message has to be zero tolerance. You keep saying to your kid, “I just don’t think it’s okay, I can’t approve it.” We’ve lost more kids to the effects of alcohol than all of the other drugs combined.
Q: Through drinking and driving?
A: Not just that. Most teen suicides are done in association with alcohol. I sit on a committee where we do psychological post hocs when we lose kids; we get their hard drives and talk to their parents and so forth, and try to figure out how we don’t lose the next one. In virtually every situation, alcohol figures in in some way, it’s a depressant. And we lose another whole bunch of kids who [unintentionally] drink themselves to death: they put their breathing mechanism to sleep and choke on their own vomit. It’s a deadly drug, and teens are getting it from us parents. We actually endorse it, particularly for boys, as a rite of passage, by associating it with sports and manhood. It’s crazy. The American Medical Association did a study two years ago, and one-third of the kids said their parents gave them alcohol voluntarily, and one-fourth said they drink with their parents or with the parents of a close friend.
Q: What’s going on in the heads of parents who supply it for teens’ parties?
A: We actually researched this at the post hocs, and we had parents saying, “Well, I didn’t want him doing drugs.” I’m thinking, oh, really? Another response was, “I didn’t want her drinking and driving, so we’d set up a keg in the basement and tell the kids not to tell their parents, just say it’s a sleepover. We were really safeguarding all these children.” The other one was, “I’m teaching my kid how to drink.” The fact is, the kid is going to drink, it’s so prevalent in the culture that all of our kids are going to experiment with alcohol and likely marijuana. The key is, how do you keep it at a level of experimentation? Fathers in particular hate hearing this, but zero tolerance serves as a limiter of behaviour. Consider speed limits: if you post 80, everybody does 90.
Q: And then how do you respond when the kid inevitably comes home drunk?
A: You first say, “We’ll talk tomorrow, because you’re drunk tonight.” And by the way, if your kid is staggering or can’t talk, take him to the hospital. It’s an overdose. If he overdosed on heroin would you roll him in the corner to sleep, and hope he woke up? Of course not. The next morning, take him out to the coffee shop and ask, “What did you learn?” He might say, “Dad, it was insane, we were in the park, it was freezing, a kid was puking, Johnny jumped on Susie and tried to rape her and she’s screaming, we had to pull him off.” Well, why would you punish your kid then? Just say, “I think you learned something. How can we keep this from happening the next time?” When the kid says, “Oh, I won’t drink again,” you say, “Well what happens if you do? Are you telling me you’re not ready for the level of freedom to be out in the park on Friday nights?” Put the consequence in place for the next time. But your goal is teaching. If the kid saw that alcohol makes kids crazy—and by the way, it’s associated with STDs and unintentional pregnancies—then he’s less likely to see booze as romantic. If you go crazy, yell, scream, hit the kid and ground him, he’s just going to climb out the window and get back to the booze as soon as he can.
Q: Do kids today drink differently than their parents did?
A: Yes, more binge drinking: as much as they can, as fast as they can. A lot of kids hate the taste of alcohol, so they make vodka jello cubes and find ways to ingest lethal amounts without the bad taste. The second thing is that they drink at younger and younger ages.
Q: What can parents do if their kid simply won’t talk or communicate?
A: First, understand it’s normal. Boys, in particular, often go into the cave for a year, just disappear into their rooms. Don’t take it personally. It means they’ve learned what they need to from the family and now they’re studying peer relationships, really examining issues like trust, responsibility, loyalty, the nature of friendship. They’ve gone to another school, if you will, temporarily. Continue to do outreach—not screaming and yelling, but knocking on the door and saying, “Hey, we love and miss you, and know you’re not into the family right now, but if you ever need a hug, or want to get a coffee, let me know.” The kid will roll his eyes, saying, “God Mom, ugh,” but inside he knows he’s loved. The worst thing to do is figure that parenting is over and now your kid’s on his own. Kids get sad and depressed and sometimes filled with rage when parents pull away from them in early adolescence.
Q: Are most parents aware of most of what their teens get up to?
A: Teens are great at flying under the radar. That’s a blessing, actually. Parents ask all the time whether they should spy on their kids’ email, and I say, “If you do, you may get what you deserve.”
