Talking alcohol with teenagers
One website’s rule on counselling your kids about drinking? Focus on how to best present your message
Prom season, graduation events, trips to the beach, summer jobs, going off to college or university for the first time — it’s the time of year when the headiness of changes going on in teenagers’ lives often make them want to experiment with alcohol. TheAlcoholTalk.com offers some relevant statistics and practical advice for parents of teens who need to help them make safe decisions. Touted as a new approach to the “drinking talk” that most parents eventually have, it focuses on how the message is presented to children. Developed from conversations with teens, their parents and experts on teens and parenting, TheAlcoholTalk.com is a new alcohol awareness campaign largely funded by distillers. Based on feedback from teens themselves, the campaign strives to hit the right tone so that the message is actually taken in by the very ones it is designed to reach. A linguist analyzed the conversations used as the basis for the campaign — more than 40 hours of focus groups with experts, parents and teens — and created a series of key words and dialogue clusters to guide parents when they talk to kids at various life stages, from before Grade 6 (when two-thirds of teens say they first became aware of alcohol), Grade 6 to Grade 8, and Grade 9 and beyond. The user-friendly website that resulted combines text and video tools to facil- itate “impactful conversations” about drinking.
According to information on the site, almost 50 per cent of teens polled by Research Now said they fear their parents are going to lecture them during “the alcohol talk” and 75 per cent of parents do exactly that.
And 64 per cent of teens surveyed said that Grade 5 or younger is when they initially became aware of alcohol, but most parents think Grade 6 to Grade 8 is the best time to start “the alcohol talk.”
According to Dr. Jennifer Powell-Lunder, an authority on parenting, author and clinical psychologist who helped develop the online campaign, underwritten by Pernod Ricard USA, there are how-totalk tools for such topics as peer pressure, how to clearly state consequences for bad decisions, and how to validate a child’s opinion by including them in the conversation. She is co-author of Teenage as a Second Language (Adams Media 2010) and the creator of itsatweenslife.com, an interactive and informational website for parents and tweens, and co-creator of Talkingteenage.com, an interactive informational website for the parents of teenagers.
Among the tips from thealcoholtalk.com:
Establish and develop a strong rapport with your child in their early years so you can engage them in conversations as they mature.
Listen to what is on your child’s mind. It can be tempting for parents to jump in and impose solutions, but it’s important to ask your teen’s opinion.
Address drinking early and often, as it comes up naturally in other conversation topics. Use relevant topics, such as magazine articles or TV shows, as a jumping off point for conversations. You may wish to bring it up at certain milestones, such as entering high school, when peer pressure to drink may become more intense.
If you really want to discuss something important, encourage your child to set a time and place so they feel more comfortable with the discussion.
Parents should practise what they preach about responsible drinking. More tips at the TheAlcoholTalk.com, a project of the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility (FAAR), a national not-for-profit that aims to eliminate drunk driving and underage drinking.