Reply to Teenage Drinking - A hard no? Or can this be done responsibly?

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Reply to "Teenage Drinking - A hard no? Or can this be done responsibly?"

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[quote=Anonymous]The hard no people confuse me. What does that even mean? At actual parties (not talking about a few kids hanging out at someone's house) somebody there will have alcohol available. Do the hard no people forbid their kids from attending? Do they not get to go to the prom after parties because somebody else will bring a bottle?

The last thing I'd want to do is absolutely forbid my kid to drink alcohol because when he succumbed to being a normal teen and then had an safety issue come up, he'd be totally afraid to come to me for help. And I would never forgive myself if he drove himself home drunk/buzzed and hurt someone, all because I chose to make drinking into a black and white issue for him.

How about pushing alcohol safety? Let's show them what responsible drinking looks like. That includes discouraging the binge drinking that kids tend to do when they secretly drink in completely unsupervised settings. I have a friend who is extreme about her drinking. She won't order a glass of wine with a dinner in a restaurant at 6:30 because she has to drive home at the end of the meal at 8 pm. I think this sends the wrong message to young people. Better to model how to drink safely and moderately. They shouldn't think it's either you get shit-faced drunk or else you never let a drop of wine pass your lips within 12 hours of driving.

I didn't do this, but part of me wanted to have my kid drink 3 shots and 3 beers within about 3 hours just so he could see what that felt like to puke from being drunk, and how awful he felt the next morning and into the afternoon. In real life, people learn the lesson that this is too much little by little. Or else they keep drinking because they're using alcohol for problematic reasons (avoiding some painful issue, alcohol dependency, etc...) Usually, once you've been sick, you try to avoid that again unless you've got unresolved issues.

The summer before he left for college, my oldest child came to me one morning and said he felt awful because he'd had way too much Tito's vodka from his friend's dad's liquor cabinet the night before. I told him to remember that moment and what it felt like because there would be a time at college when he needed to use the entire weekend to write a paper or study for a final. If he drank as much as he just had the night before on a Friday night, he would be incapable of getting his college work done on time. Not sure if that stuck with him. [/quote]

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