Kids Absorb Your Drinking

With Family Day coming up on February 18, it gives us time to reflect on family.  Families come in all shapes and sizes, and can often include relatives as well as friends. Regardless of our family make up, we learn a lot about life from our families.  We learn practical things as well as more subtle or unspoken things that become part of our cultural experience.  How we view alcohol is one of those things where actions speak louder than words.

Alcohol is a legal drug that is often part of family dinners, celebrations, sporting events and other gatherings.  Having a beer or a glass of wine can appear to be as harmless as having a glass of water, with little need for discussion or teaching.  Through the ages, children have grown up in environments where they have been exposed to alcohol; this is nothing new.  However, for the most part there was little exposure to alcohol outside of family and social gatherings.  Today, a child’s “education” about alcohol more often than not comes from alcohol advertising and promotion, the movies, TV, and alcohol sponsorship of sporting events such as the Olympics and the Super Bowl (see related blog post).  There is a need to have a conversation about how alcohol is consumed near children, how it is advertised and the cultural norms that have been created surrounding its use.
    

Parents play an important role in countering the “exciting and consequence free” alcohol promotion that children are exposed to.  Kids mimic and learn from what they see and hear.  How we consume alcohol and how we talk about alcohol in front of our children will provide them with a basis for how they treat alcohol later.  These actions can help ensure that alcohol is only a part of our good times.

Upcoming Event
On Tuesday, March 5th, 2013 @ 7 pm Dr. Jean M. Clinton will be speaking at Holy Cross on “The Adolescent Brain: Why teens do the things they do”. The presentation will explore what has been learned about brain development and how the environment and experience plays a key role in this development. Risk taking, novelty seeking, and risk of substance abuse will be discussed. Stay tuned for more information.