<p>sptch…we allowed small sips of beer and wine at holidays too. We drink light to moderately on weekends ourselves. We enjoy alcohol but don’t over indulge. But we didn’t allow kids to come over and drink beers as long as they gave us their keys (some parents do that around here). And we monitored where our son went and whether or not reasonable parents were around to supervise. That’s what I meant by strict.<br>
What I am challenging here is any DIRECT causal relationship between what parents do and whether or not kids drink in college (studies have show some correlations…that’s it). That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to educate our children. Whether or not they listen to our advice…who knows…it might be a matter of peer group, environment, physiology, genetics, any number of factors that are really difficult to evaluate. Parent influence is most certainly in the mix…but it’s not the only factor IMO. So we shouldn’t give up but I think it’s naive to think it’s all under our control.</p>
<p>“Interesting - I was allowed wine (about 1/2 inch or so) when adults were imbiding (very rare, btw) even as a child. I am basically a teetotaler - will have a glass of wine at a party and nurse it all evening long.”</p>
<p>I was allowed wine at home, too, but even back then thought it was wrong for my parents to break the law that way. I promised myself that I wouldn’t do the same with my own kids. I felt back then and now that when a parent allows a kid to break the law at home, that tacitly tells kids that it’s OK to break the law in other ways. This can include, for instance, drug use.</p>
<p>Drinking to drunkenness never has been my idea of fun, but I don’t think that’s because I was allowed to drink at home – and even underage in a restaurant – by my parents. I think that it’s because I simply think that getting drunk and throwing up is unappealing behavior.</p>
<p>We never allowed our underage kids to drink in this country. When we were on vacation, we would have allowed younger S, then a teen, to drink in a restaurant in France, where it was legal, but he wasn’t interested.</p>
<p>Older S went to college and became a big time drinker to the point that I was worried about his becoming alcoholic, something that runs in H’s side of the family. The other is 21 and says he has never had a drink. I believe him because when we went to a bar together last summer with friends after a community theater rehearsal, my son didn’t even know how to pay for his Coke. “What’s a bar tab?” he asked me. He says he doesn’t drink because he doesn’t see the point of it: He can have fun without alcohol, he says.</p>
<p>The following are from EMM1’s stat sourse at post #94.</p>
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<p>Binge drinking has been a concern of mine recently as we have begun the college search for our S who is 16. He is very clear on our expectations that drinking is not an option for him now. I can only take the approach I feel is the best for our family and talk consistently about the consequences of drinking at this point. I do not know what is the best approach!</p>
<p>Also wanted to share that last Spring we hosted a wonderful 18 year old boy from Chile for 4 months. We asked often about the drinking culture in Santiago. He was open that they start going to clubs at about age 14-15 and drinking, but that is was socially unacceptable to be drunk in public.</p>
<p>My comments have been directed to what I think was the question originally addressed by the OP: do you (or did you) provide alcohol to your kids before they left for college in the hope of belief that the experience of supervised drinking in a precollege setting would help them be more responsible drinkers in college? If you have been following along you know I answered no, I deliberately did not provide drinking opportunities for my kids for the reasons already stated.</p>
<p>But, not providing my teens with alcohol does not mean I took a “hard stand” against drinking as was inferred by other posters. I did not naively expect my kids would get through their college years without drinking. I did not and do not think that parents of college students who drink are bad parents, as was also inferred. If I believed that, I would have to also believe that I’m a bad parent too, right 
?</p>
<p>What I did do and attempt to do is educate my kids about drinking and the consequences of drinking. Offering them alcohol in my home or elsewhere would have weakened the message and, I believe, could have possibly caused them physical harm. I am not willingly going to do something that could harm my kids, especially if the so-called benefit of that action is so much in doubt. Of course, my kids, my family, YMMV.</p>
<p>In a study over 4 years (2002-2005), of the 18-20 male full time college students
60.4% had a drink within the month and 46.9% were binge drinkers.</p>
<p>Appears not all underage college males drink or binge. Also, the percentage of college male bingers is roughly equal to the percentage of high school drinkers. Interesting.</p>
<p>40% of underage college males don’t drink. </p>
<p>[CSPI:</a> Alcohol Policy: Binge Drinking on College Campuses](<a href=“http://www.cspinet.org/booze/collfact1.htm]CSPI:”>Center for Science in the Public Interest)</p>
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<p>Please remember that in many states it is no more against the law to allow one’s own offspring to have a glass of wine with a parent in attendance than it is for an 18 y/o to have a glass of wine in France.</p>
<p>This isn’t directed at you in particular, NSM; I have no idea what the laws are in your state. But I do see comments posted fairly frequently by people who seem to think that there is some kind of federal law which makes it illegal to consume alcohol under age 21. That is not the case. Each state formulates their own laws and MANY of them have family exceptions as well as religious services exceptions.</p>
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<p>Cheers! Lots of choices it seems.</p>
<p>Let’s cut to the chase here, shall we? Let’s throw out the legality question and let’s stop using the term “alcohol” and call it what it really is, which is a drug. As someone who believes that drugs should be legalized, I am not using that term in the context of “just say no!” or other scare-tactic based contexts. </p>
<p>Alcohol, like many other drugs and activities can be addicting. So, let’s go from there.</p>
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<p>Addiction is not an inability to consume a substance “responsibly.” </p>
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<p>I would add setting the example that socializing and alcohol are synonymous. Which goes hand in hand with this;</p>
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<p>Thank you for sharing actual research in this thread. I am growing weary of this “that’s your opinion” line when there is a fairly substancial body of research about addiction. </p>
<p>I also want to clarify, once again, that educating ones child about drug consumption does not have to involve the child consuming the drug in question.</p>
<p>Nor does it have to involve taking the stance that no drug must ever pass over the child’s lips or demonizing all drugs or any other extreme example that is being used at the alleged logical opposite of training/helping one’s child to deal with these issues by consuming the drug in question in “responsible” quanities.</p>
<p>I see demonizing a drug as the flip side of the same coin as believing one can responsibly train/help their child to consume addictive substances. One of the most terrifying things about addiction is the lack of ability to predict who will struggle and who will not. In our quest to believe that we can game the odds in our childs favor, I believe there is a lot of wishful thinking going on. </p>
<p>We have done the things that research has indicated are least harmful as the years have gone by. Ultimately, he was dealt a lousy hand on this issue and we’ve tried to help him come to terms with that. The future is simply unknown and unknowable.</p>
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<p>This is pretty much what I told my D all through HS and I’m pretty sure she took it all to heart. I did not say “do not drink”, or “you may not drink”, not because I have a problem with direct prohibitions but because it felt hypocritical. She has been around plenty of alcohol at parties (she is now a college soph), and once as a senior drank too much–not enough to get sick or pass out but enough to realize how much control she lost over her behavior. She is not much of a drinker now, but realistically I would attribute that to maybe 50% our attitudes and behavior as parents and 50% her innate temperament.</p>
<p>Our S, on the other hand, was quite the drinker in HS and through college. He had a hard time in HS academically, he wasn’t into team sports, and basically squeaked through. We didn’t tell him “do not drink” either. I still don’t think there was much we could have done to change his behavior other than complete lock-down. Why? Because he has grown up seeing my H drink every night (two beers) his entire life. </p>
<p>In retrospect, I think two things:
That S drank to help ease his socializing. He was popular but shy, and alcohol was THE social glue that bonded his group–it was their “fun”, their identifying ritual.</p>
<p>And that the parents’ drinking or non-drinking and their own personal attitudes towards alcohol is a huge influence. Our kids are watching us. My H has now quit drinking. He realized that he had a problem, not because he was drinking too much, but because he had come to depend on his beer every night to “unwind” and it had become as much a nightly ritual as brushing his teeth. We never ever socialized without alcohol. Even though I myself rarely drink, my H’s example was clearly the formative one for our S. It was during my D’s HS years (she is 6 years younger than S), that my H’s behavior started to change, along with the dawning realization that his relationship to alcohol was problematic. Seeing him struggle with this had a huge impact on her, I’m sure.</p>
<p>Now, at 25, my S has really toned down his drinking. His attitude has also changed because he is more comfortable and confident and no longer needs alcohol to socialize. </p>
<p>The only thing that we would have done differently (that I believe would have been effective) is for my H to have stopped much earlier. I don’t think parents need to quit outright—it doesn’t have to be such an extreme thing-- I could argue that being a teetotaler is the flip side to being a binge drinker. It was my H’s choice to stop for now, because he recognized his emotional dependence on alcohol, and he also recognized how damaging that example was for our kids.</p>
<p>This is tangentially related, and interesting. The one thing about the program that I wonder about is whether the students who get the training are likely to be partying with the binge drinkers. </p>
<p>While I drank underage in college, no one I hung out with binge drank or played drinking games, something I’d never heard of until I had had teens and other parents told me such games existed. I never wanted to be around anyone whose idea of fun was drinking to drunkenness, and that’s my impression of other people – including college students and teens – who are social or nondrinkers.</p>
<p>"While studies report that more than 80 percent of college students drink alcohol, the latest statistics reveal that nearly half indulge in binge-drinking, generally defined as downing five or more drinks in about two hours for men and four or more drinks for women.</p>
<p>The number of students who binge drink rose from nearly 42 percent in 1999, to nearly 45 percent in 2005, according to a July report by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Alcohol-related deaths among college students increased from 1,440 in 1998 to 1,825 in 2005, the NIAAA reported.</p>
<p>Overall, efforts to intervene in binge drinking have been largely unsuccessful. But the main goal of programs such as the new “Red Watch Band” program at Stony Brook University in New York is to prevent students from dying of intoxication.</p>
<p>Bluntly put, Red Watch Band “is a death prevention program,” says Lara Hunter, the program’s national coordinator. “It’s targeted at the bystander,” she says.</p>
<p>The watches, which students receive after completing a training program on how to recognize and respond to alcohol emergencies, are meant to symbolize a band of students watching over each other when every minute counts…'</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33198765/ns/health-addictions/[/url]”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33198765/ns/health-addictions/</a></p>
<p>I am with you all the way on this one, NSMom. This binge drinking is a terrible, terrible problem that I, too, did not see during my college days. For all of the problems that alcohol did bring on campus, I did not know of a single case of anyone hospitalized much less dying from alcohol poisoning. </p>
<p>The thing is, a number of the kids I’'ve known who have had binge drinking problems were “taught to drink responsibly” by their parents who truly did their best in this endeavor. The problem is that drinking responsibly, enjoying wine or beer with a meal, champagne for a toast, some cocktails at gathering is a whole different activity than drinking for the very purpose of getting wasted. And that is the type of drinking that many young people do in college. Has little to do with all of the background they have had in learning to drink responsibly.</p>
<p>I love the red watch band idea. I am going to have to share this with my sons. </p>
<p>It may not be cool to be a buzzkill, but it is even more uncool to go to your friends funeral.</p>
<p>I am confused by the current binge drinking hysteria. I, and practically everyone I knew, engaged in what is now called binge drinking in college. My big maturity push as a senior was to limit getting drunk to twice a week, and not to drink at all on at least a few days. (My closest friends didn’t have that option, since they more or less HAD to get drunk at their senior society Wednesday and Sunday nights, and they didn’t want to give up some weekend partying.)</p>
<p>People threw up sometimes. They did things they regretted, often with other people. They passed out. They slept it off. No one ever went to the hospital. No one died, or got seriously injured. (Actually, I do know someone a few years older than I who became paraplegic using gymnastics equipment and LSD at the same time.) I can’t remember hearing the term “alcohol poisoning” until six or seven years ago.</p>
<p>I am not saying that this behavior was harmless. There were some people who were, or became, alcoholics, and ultimately I couldn’t take enabling my friends’ self-destruction, so I stopped drinking with them, and then pretty much stopped drinking altogether, because there were other things I wanted to be doing. Some people couldn’t keep themselves from driving, and that was a horrible menace, to themselves and to others. A high school classmate of my sister’s passed out in a snow bank walking the two blocks back to his house from a friend’s, and froze to death. But I knew more people in college who were killed by a stone-sober jealous boyfriend (1) than who died from binge drinking, including alcohol-related violence (0). </p>
<p>Clearly, there is better reporting now, so when a kid dies at Penn State or wherever, it is all over the news, and it feels like it happened everywhere, and everyone is more aware of low-incidence risks that were always there. But I still don’t understand whether all these kids going to the hospital reflects a change in the seriousness of drinking behaviors or a change in how people are dealing with the age-old consequences of drinking yourself silly.</p>
<p>Best way to teach kids to drink responsibly: Be a role model for abstinence or extreme moderation from the time they are born. Let the kids witness their parents having loads of fun without mood-altering substances, year after year.</p>
<p>“I am with you all the way on this one, NSMom. This binge drinking is a terrible, terrible problem that I, too, did not see during my college days. For all of the problems that alcohol did bring on campus, I did not know of a single case of anyone hospitalized much less dying from alcohol poisoning.”</p>
<p>“Clearly, there is better reporting now, so when a kid dies at Penn State or wherever, it is all over the news, and it feels like it happened everywhere, and everyone is more aware of low-incidence risks that were always there. But I still don’t understand whether all these kids going to the hospital reflects a change in the seriousness of drinking behaviors or a change in how people are dealing with the age-old consequences of drinking yourself silly.”</p>
<p>I suspect the truth lies between both comments. My freshman year of college (1971) I was at Penn State’s main campus. At home football games there was a steady stream of students walking to the top of the stadium, throwing up over the wall and then returning to their seats to resume drinking while watching the game. I vividly recall a massive snow storm where in the aftermath, a couple of thousand drunken students went snowball rampaging across campus leaving a load of broken windows in their wake. None of this ever made the national news. Shift to today where periodically there are “mini riots” of drunken students in State College. All sorts of publicity, both in the print media and online. The biggest difference I see is the level of news coverage.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I wonder whether there are behavioral differences between this conduct which on it’s face is so similar. Subjectively, based on my experience 30 - 40 years ago and based on talking with a multitude of current college students on a regular basis, I have a subjective impression that what drove the conduct when I was in college was more a desire to just party your brains out for the fun of it, for the social interaction, fueled by the exuberance of youth, without appropriate governors on behavior due to youth, immaturity and inexperience in life. In contrast, I think that what often (though of course not exclusively) drives the behavior today are issues of self image, self esteem and problems in family relationships. My exposure to excessive drinking in college seemed to be part of a function of social engagement while my subjective impression is that today much of it is driven by a desire to “escape” or “disengage”. Maybe I am reading too much into it, perhaps glamorizing my recollections of my own youthful excesses, but there does seem to be an element of underlying differences.</p>
<p>An earlier poster commented that you don’t have to expose your kid to alcohol to teach responsible alcohol related behavior, that it is really about teaching values and self esteem. My wife posed a few days ago a question and observation that, as a generation, parents of today’s college kids have in many ways failed their children. Hyperfocused on their own careers, achievements, their own priorities, many parents today have failed their children when it comes to meaningful involvement in their lives and taking the time to foster good values and feelings of self worth. Yeah, I know, a generalization and we all will look at ourselves and say “not me”, but how many times have you found yourself chatting with your spouse about a friend or acquaintance of your kid whose parents don’t seem to give their kid the attention and involved parenting they need, who are clueless about their kid’s drinking behavior or don’t know where their kids are at night? How many times have you had conversations with your friends about similar kids that they know? It takes much more than simply being a taxi driver dropping your kids off at activities that get them out of your hair for a few hours a day.</p>
<p>An earlier poster complained that they were “tired” of posts on this thread suggesting that parents who chose not to allow their kids to experience alcohol were somehow “bad” parents deficient in preparing their kids for life. I don’t think that’s being said at all. In fact I think the converse is more accurate - that parents who expose their kids to alcohol are being judged as irresponsible or “wrong” whether based on the “law” or some “study”. In my experience, that is the more prevalent reaction, not just on this Board but in our local communities. As I’ve said before, each parent has to make their own decision about how to approach this topic with their kid based on a myriad of factors personal to the individuals involved and their relationship. The common denominator, that can’t be ignored, is that it is critical to engage your kids on this topic, repeatedly over their teenage years. If you don’t engage, I don’t think anyone will dispute that the odds are much greater that once off to college, a kid will have problems with alcohol as well as other inappropriate behaviors.</p>
<p>In the case of our daughter, our approach was to give her the freedom to make more and more of what we thought were age and developmentally appropriate adult decisions, with our guidance and oversight, building on her successes and learning from her mistakes. Her safety and health, physical, medical and emotional, were always the paramount overlay to this process but within the scope of well reasoned limitations, she was empowered to take control of her own life. We applied this approach to life activities in general, in which exposure to alcohol was just one part. Recognizing that at 18 she would not only be in college but in practical terms living outside of our home on what would likely be a permanent year round basis, we wanted to make sure that to the fullest extent possible, we promoted her developing the values, self esteem, life skills and life experiences that would enable her to do so safely and competently. The way we chose to do that, in which the issue of alcohol was just one of many facets of life activities in which we started giving her the freedom to govern her own life, within limitations that we set, before she hit 18 and was off to college, worked very well for us and our daughter. Doesn’t mean that it would be right for anyone else.</p>
<p>When I went to college, at least one person a year committed suicide at the college that I attended. This info was covered in the school paper. However, I never remember hearing about anyone dying of alcohol poisoning. To my knowledge, it simply didn’t happen. Never heard of anyone either who was hospitalized due to alcohol poisoning. Some students did, however, have problems with drugs.</p>
<p>I went to a large state school (many years ago!) that was known, and is still known, as a party school. Binge drinking was common. Kids got sick…especially freshman Weekends started on Thursday…as did the big drinking. </p>
<p>But no one died from alcohol poisoning. No one fell off a balcony or died in the snow. </p>
<p>Kids are dying now at an alarming rate. It’s got to be more than just reporting. I think kids are drinking MORE… I think EXTREME drinking is in vogue. It’s almost like the term binge drinking isn’t enough to describe what these kids are doing. </p>
<p>Moving on, yes, there was just a tragic death at PSU. A young freshman fell down a stairwell on his way home. He was alone. And drunk. Not pass-out drunk, but drunk enough, based on his BAC. The cops will go after the fraternities for furnishing I’m sure. A couple of years ago, they arrested 20 students from various apartments for furnishing. With all this increased enforcement, drinking and associated incidents at PSU continue to increase.
I think it’s time to try another approach. I like the red-watch program. The emphasis is on safety. Volunteer buddy systems, late buses, medical amnesty programs, students trained in CPR. That’s the right direction, IMO, to stop DEATHS.</p>
<p>MichaelNKat - I think I’m going to stop posting here and just read your posts and know that I agree with you. You seem to be able to say/write exactly what I’m thinking and trying to say/write - but you do a much, much better job of it. Thanks!</p>
<p>toneranger – I barely think its possible to drink more than my friends and I did in college. (I actually pulled back a little. Sometimes.)</p>
<p>– During the middle of my freshman year, I went something like six weeks without spending 24 consecutive hours sober. That was really not healthy. Some of it was social, and some was hating what I was doing at the time.</p>
<p>– In my college, like many others, Thursday - Saturday nights were party nights. Sometimes I would miss a night in there, but there tended to be a lot of drinking all three nights. In addition, we had a regular Tuesday night party in my dorm, with a keg (because no one had parties on Tuesday night). I used to go around 11:00 and drink and dance until it shut down at 1:30-2:00. Pretty much every week. During the same period, our resident faculty person had weekly afternoon “teas” on Wednesday featuring punch bowls of whiskey sours. You get the picture: Tuesday-Saturday.</p>
<p>– Oh, and that didn’t count our competitive beer-drinking team and intramural league. Luckily, practices and meets were only sporadic, but when they happened it meant consuming at least 10, and often a lot more, 8 oz glasses of beer in a 2-3 hour period.</p>
<p>Anyway, the point is that I was binge drinking all the time, and I was surrounded by other people who were drinking as much as I was, or more. People getting sick was a common occurrence (although by the time they were sophomores most people had learned how to stop before going that far), ditto people passing out, and people having to be helped back to their rooms and into bed – that wasn’t common, it was part of the fabric of practically every evening. I’m sure someone (lots of someones) must have had alcohol poisoning somewhere in there. But they survived it.</p>