Parents - What Should You Tell Your Kids About Drinking

I am a teacher in a community college.  Every year, as part of a class project, I have the students conduct focus groups with other students about student alcohol use. They then conduct several hundred interviews of students to further explore student’s alcohol use, their attitudes about drinking, and the likelihood that they will drink excessively in a typical week.  The results of multiple focus groups and thousands of interviews would shock parents.

In a focus group I held recently among college-aged students, it became clear that “binge drinking” is equated with the word “partying”. It is considered a “good” thing. It is something they “want” to be a part of. Binge drinking is what they hope to do! Warning your kids that they should not binge drink is pointless since binge drinking is now accepted as a “really good thing” among college students.

More that half of all the students that were interviewed for these projects were drinking to the point of being drunk several times a week. A fairly large number were drinking until they passed out on a regular basis, and many had experienced blackouts. Parents, you and your kids need to know that blackouts are an early warning sign of alcoholism.  These students, many of whom are not of legal drinking age, are drinking excessively on a regular basis.

So, if you are a parent of a college-aged student, what do you need to do?

1. Give your student “performance based” criteria for behavior:
   1. don’t drink and drive
   2. don’t drink more than (some specific amount) of beer
   3. or some other SPECIFIC instruction
   4. Stay away from platitudes such as “don’t binge drink” since your warning can be their rallying cry.
2. Know what rules your school has about drinking on campus.
3. Learn your school’s statistics about violations of those drinking rules.
   1. How many infractions occurred in the past school year?
   2. Explore further to see if those statistics are accurate- they often aren’t - schools like to minimize these stats.
4. Learn what your child is doing on school nights - are they studying or are they drinking?
5. Consider attaching “conditions” to your tuition payments - conditions that are behavior based.
6. Be sure they have a plan to insure they don’t drink and drive - talk to them about this and get their commitment to NEVER drink and drive. Then find out how they will do this. Designated drivers aren’t as common today as they were even five years ago.
7. Learn the signs of problem drinking.  This will be be a frequent focus of my website  http://collegekidsincrisis.com

In conclusion, alcohol abuse is rampant at our colleges and universities. As parents, you need to be proactive in intervening in your child’s relationship with alcohol. You need to understand the dangers of alcohol abuse; you need to have specific, performance based criteria for your kids; and you need to monitor how they are spending their time - studying vs partying. You need to understand how much alcohol abuse is occurring on your child’s campus, and you need to understand the warning signs that your child has a problem.

None of this is easy, but you can start today by getting educated yourself.

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