How can parents help teens decide not to drink? And should they – shouldn’t they be “teaching” their teens to drink?

These are common questions among parents (and teens, for that matter). There’s an underlying perception that “all teens drink” or “I [parent] drank and am fine, so what’s the big deal?”

Reasons to Help Teens Decide Not to Drink

I have been studying the U.S. Surgeon General’s 2007 Call To Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking (CTA) and found so many, many sections very interesting. To frame the issue I’m going to discuss in this post, consider these statistics from recent surveys shared in this CTA:

• Approximately 10 percent of 9- to 10- year-olds have started drinking (Note: in these studies, the question asked youth whether they had ever consumed more than a few sips of alcohol.) (CTA, p. 6).
• Nearly one-third of youth begin drinking before age 13 (CTA, p. 6).
• The peak years of alcohol initiation are 7th and 8th grades (CTA, p. 6) For boys, the average age to first try alcohol is 13.9 and for girls it’s 14.36 years old.
• About 80 percent of college students drink alcohol, about 40 percent engage in binge drinking, and about 20 percent engage in frequent episodic heavy consumption, which is bingeing three or more times over the past 2 weeks (CTA, p. 12-13).

So why such a concentration of alcohol abuse between the onset of puberty and the assumption of adult roles? Why is it that this time in a person’s life makes them particularly vulnerable to alcohol use and its consequences?

Well, as you can imagine, there are PAGES and PAGES of answers to these questions, but one area I wanted to bring to your attention in this post has to do with the fact that many of the significant transitions and milestone achievements for adolescents often occur at specific ages, not at specific developmental periods. “For example, the moves to middle and high school and the acquisition of a driver’s license and job experience are generally age based. As a result, some adolescents may be developmentally out of step with the majority of their peers or with the demands of their social environment, particularly in the case of early and late maturing adolescents. A mismatch between social pressures and the cognitive and emotional abilities of an adolescent may increase vulnerability to involvement with alcohol. In the case of early maturing adolescent girls, for example, having an older or adult boyfriend raises the risk for underage use of alcohol and other drugs and the adoption of delinquent behaviors (Castillo Mezzich et al. 1999). For boys, same gender peers rather than older romantic interests tend to increase the risk for initiation into alcohol and other drug use (Dishion et al. 1994; Elliot and Menard 1996; Fergusson and Horwood 1996, 1999; Hawkins et al. 1992; Kandel 1978; Sampson and Laub 1993). During significant transitions, adolescents can benefit from extra support to avoid alcohol use.” (CTA, p 22)

So what should / can parents do to help their teens with this important decision?

According to the CTA, “To properly deal with underage alcohol use requires some understanding of the complex interplay of developmental, individual, and environmental forces creating the risk and protective factors that lead adolescents toward or away from alcohol use. Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by special vulnerabilities to alcohol use and by an especially wide range of individual differences in maturation. Just as a 12 year old and a 15 year old are very different, so there is considerable variability among 12 year olds themselves. As a result, strategies and scaffolds designed to protect adolescents from alcohol use must be tailored to the particular adolescent as well as to adolescents as a group, which means not only to the general attributes of adolescents but also to a particular adolescent’s maturational stage, to his or her individual characteristics, and to the particulars of the environment in which the adolescent lives. Furthermore, the components of the scaffold should evolve as the adolescent matures.”

The CTA continues with, “Strategies for parents and other caregivers”:
• Youth of different ages are developmentally different and require different strategies, approaches, and types of scaffolds that are developmentally appropriate. Risk and protective factors related to alcohol use shift throughout adolescence, and parents need to be alert to these shifts.
• The protective scaffolding that parents provide to support the positive development of their children in relation to alcohol use should begin before puberty and continue throughout the span of adolescence into young adulthood.
• Parents need to appreciate that the nature of adolescence makes alcohol especially appealing to youth and understand how, from a developmental perspective, to reduce that appeal and the demand it creates for alcohol.
• Parents need to be aware of adolescents’ particular vulnerability to alcohol’s effects.
• During periods of high stress, such as a parental divorce, and during times of significant social transitions, such as the move from elementary school to middle school and from middle school to high school, the risk for alcohol involvement may increase. Parents need to be especially watchful during these periods and, if necessary, temporarily increase the supportive scaffolding around their adolescents.”

So please pass this along — it’s more food for thought. For a complete copy of the CTA (U.S. Surgeon General’s Call to Action), click here.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Lisa Frederiksen

Author | Speaker | Consultant | Founder at BreakingTheCycles.com

Lisa Frederiksen is the author of hundreds of articles and 12 books, including her latest, "10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You'd Stop! What you really need to know when your loved one drinks too much,” and "Loved One In Treatment? Now What!” She is a national keynote speaker with over 30 years speaking experience, consultant and founder of BreakingTheCycles.com. Lisa has spent the last 19+ years studying and simplifying breakthrough research on the brain, substance use and other mental health disorders, secondhand drinking, toxic stress, trauma/ACEs and related topics.

Latest posts by Lisa Frederiksen (see all)

• Does a Loved One Have to Hit Bottom? - November 20, 2022
• Resources for Parents of Children with Substance Use and Mental Disorders - October 18, 2022
• 4 Things to Support Brain Health and Function for Recovery - August 30, 2022