<p>The problem is, some teens refuse to listen to stats unless they are personally affected.</p>
<p>Two thoughts after wading through this thread:</p>
<p>Thought #1:
Spoiled rotten is spoiled rotten.</p>
<p>Thought #2:
Colleges seeking to reduce binge drinking rates could start by adding a simple multiple choice question to the application: “Have you ever played beer pong with your parents?” Anyone selecting the “Dude, it’s AWESOME!” answer is automatically rejected.</p>
<p>The thread seems to have turned to the general topic of teen drinking which has been debated here many times before - but what about the OP’s initial description of a bunch of teenagers regularly going to a house that has NO parental supervision and drinking, I assume to excess, with the ‘friend’ taking a seemingly casual ‘oh well - nothing I can do about it’ attitude? This isn’t about a teen having a drink of wine with dinner at home or just a teen experimenting with alchohol a bit - it’s about a parent allowing their kid to regularly to place themselves in a potentially harmful unsupervised situation and other parents regularly enabling the situation by allowing the kids to use their home (assuming they know it’s happening). It’s also about the idea that it’s inevitable that virtually all teens will drink to excess on a regular basis which is simply not true fortunately.</p>
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<p>Thought #3</p>
<p>The above quote reminds me of what another know-it-all teenager used to write here on CC. Was his nickname Lucifer? The kid who was all about handling booze and parents just being fuddy duds…until he ended up dead of alcohol poisoning his freshman year at college.</p>
<p>In our county the adults can be prosecuted if police find underage drinking occurring in the home, even if they are not at home (or not even in town). If you own the property, you’re liable! This ordinance has been adopted by some of the cities already, and I’m sure that the rest of the cities will adopt it in the next year or so. Underage and binge drinking is a serious public health issue here.</p>
<p>Get free Sam Spady cards for your kids and give them to the parents of your kids’ friends. Hopefully they will pass them along to their own kids.</p>
<p>[Sam</a> Spady Foundation Wallet Cards](<a href=“http://www.samspadyfoundation.org/cards.html]Sam”>http://www.samspadyfoundation.org/cards.html)</p>
<p>(The SAM Spady Foundation honors the memory of Samantha Spady, a 19-year old student at Colorado State University, who died of alcohol poisoning on September 5, 2004.)</p>
<p>[SAM</a> Spady Foundation](<a href=“http://www.samspadyfoundation.org/index.html]SAM”>http://www.samspadyfoundation.org/index.html)</p>
<p>My friend did mention beer pong. What is that? Is that where you play ping pong and if you miss you take a shot? So its assumed you’d be bombed pretty fast playing that game, right? She was just like, “well that’s what kids DO and he’s social and is part of things” which again comes down to the whole popularity issue. Maybe because I was a “fringe girl” (until boarding school where there were TONS of girls like me) I don’t value popularity that much. DS has a couple of good pals that he does his sport with, not a big crowd, and I’m fine with it. (But I digress, sorry!)</p>
<p>Close, dke. Wikipedia has everything: [Beer</a> pong - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_pong]Beer”>Beer pong - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Yuk…that’s as stupid a game as the “shot a minute’” we used to play!</p>
<p>^ Haven’t been following this thread. Just wanted to add that beer pong / pong / beirut is hugely popular. On some campuses, it’s the primary form of entertainment. </p>
<p>Power Hours, which is what I assume you’re talking about, still happen. There are music programs you can download that play a random minute segment of a song and switch songs every minute, signaling when to drink. Usually people start fooling around and stop participating in the “game” before it’s up.</p>
<p>I’m a friendly person, but the word “popular” is starting to rankle me. Do we set up our kids falsely to admire and comment on other kids’ “popularity”? </p>
<p>Granted, there is a tipping point and we don’t want our kids to be rejected outcasts, but exactly how popular does a student have to be to have a happy high school career? Being popular is one of those gold-ring prizes that some people have naturally, but if it’s bought with uncomfortable behaviors, it’s not a desirable attribute of a personality.</p>
<p>Isn’t it more reasonable to hope that h.s. kids will have a circle of friends, perhaps a best friend sometimes, and begin to think more independently than when they were in Middle School. I like to meet the kids who are likeable, befriendable, and have social awareness or skills with others. That’s different from being “popular.”</p>
<p>Paying3 couldn’t agree more. I find the whole popularity quest to be so disturbing, and its fostered and encouraged by the parents. (pushy mothers IMHO).As a mother of a daughter it is very disturbing to see them buying their daughters what they “need” to be accepted, etc. what sort of message are kids getting from that sort of nonsense? Terrible values passed down.(sorry, didn’t mean to change the subject)</p>
<p>I’ve seen quite a few foolish parents value popularity in their kids above all else. Really sad now that D1 is a senior and those old friends who pursued popularity above all else throughout high school have very limited college prospects. Here’s the thing. The geeky-goodie-goodie kids become the cool kids somewhere in 11th. At least that seemed to happen unexpectedly for our DD. The boozers are . . . well . . . just the boozers.</p>
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<p>That might be true, but what I said is not in any way incorrect - everyone here implies that drinking a lot is inevitably associated with horrible, immediate consequences. If that were true, given the earlier statistic posted about the high proportion of high school students admitting to binge drinking recently, there would be many more horrible consequences. There aren’t. Thus my point: not every high school student who drinks ends up with horrible consequences as a result. Not even the majority do.</p>
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<p>I have read many of the threads, and I will be the first to admit that mini has far more access to statistics on this issue than I do. That’s the crux of my issue - mini throws out statistics that he has obviously encountered in his daily work without citing them or providing any way for anyone to explore them. Things like his assertion that Ontario has comparatively higher rates of cirrhosis and other alcohol-related diseases, which I have never heard asserted before, and still cannot verify. How am I supposed to take part in a discussion when mini calls up these statistics from out of nowhere and then provides no verification or objective citation?</p>
<p>P3t, I agree with you as well. I have always been grateful that my D did not have that need to be part of the popular clique. On and off through the years, she has been friendly with some of those kids, but they were never her closest friends. She has also never requested the designer clothes or bags that those girls seem to crave - she just likes to look nice and doesn’t care about the labels. This attitude hasn’t hurt her socially at all - she has a wide circle of friends that overlap several different groups at her school. Believe it or not, it is my 11 year old S who is more concerned with being friends with the “popular” kids and wearing the right brands of clothes. He seems to have friends from all groups, just like my D does, but he is definitely more aware of what the “popular” kids are up to than D ever was. That is one of the reasons I worry more about him getting involved with drinking and drugs (in the future, not just yet) - I think that he responds much more to peer pressure. I’m not saying my D would never do these things - I think she might try if her curiosity got the better of her - but I doubt she would try it in response to peer pressure. With S, I encourage him to hang out with the kids who seem the least likely to get involved with these things - but once he is in high school, I will probably have less control over him.</p>
<p>1of42, I do not mean to imply that all or even virtually all of kids who drink will have immediate, devastating consequences. But there are two points that you miss: </p>
<p>1) The more heavily and regularly kids drink, the more likely they are to experience those immediate, devastating consequences. As the body become acclimated to alcohol, more and more is needed to get the sought-after “buzz”. And the more often they drink, and believe themselves immortal, the more often they will drive after drinking (“Hey, I did it yesterday and nothing happened to me, so why not?”). Of course, this does not discuss the long-term consequences, which rise as the life expectancy increases.</p>
<p>2) When evaluating risk, as the consequences become worse, the need to protect against the risk becomes greater and the smaller the likelihood of the risk needs to be. For example, if the risk is failing a test, then parents generally will “allow the natural consequences” to occur. The consequences aren’t devastating. So a low consequence is OK, even if its likelihood is 90%. However, a devastating risk (like dying in a drunk driving accident, or worse yet, surviving but killing someone else) must be protected against, even if the probability of such is a risk is only 5%.</p>
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You may be correct. But thus my point: Even if you are, it’s irrelevant. With a devastating consequence, the “majority” does not rule.</p>
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<p>Actually, there are. The research is quite clear. High rates of heavy episodic drinking correlate with increased academic difficulty, blackouts, fighting, risk of injury, bothering others, and sexual assault, among other negative consequences.</p>
<p>The research also shows that the heavy drinkers are the most likely to deny the reality of these consequences.</p>
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<p>Of course they do! Who the heck would debate that?</p>
<p>My point is, when you read this thread, the overwhelming tone is “if you drink, you are going to have x,y,z happen to you for sure”. That is not realistic. In reality, many many kids drink, and even binge drink, and not nearly 100% of them have bad outcomes. Not even close. Lots do, but it is not an inevitability.</p>
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<p>That is a human psychological fallacy, giving undue weight to a horrible outcome in spite of it being highly unlikely, merely because it is horrible. It is the same fallacy that led to so many not flying after 9/11, actually leading to an increase in deaths because the risk of death on the road is higher than in the sky.</p>
<p>Each person needs to make the determination of risk for themselves. Can that person drink safely? Will they be able to keep themselves and others around them safe and out of trouble while drinking? These are questions no statistic can answer, and no group of well-meaning adults on an Internet forum can provide an answer to that question for everyone.</p>
<p>Wasn’t there some sort of recent study that said that the part of the cortex that evaluates reasonable risk isn’t fully developed til someone’s in their mid 20’s? Scary.</p>
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Right. And I maintain, as you may once you are no longer an invincible teenager, that no 16, 17 or 18 year old can make that determination of risk for themselves in any rational way.</p>
<p>As for your calling risk assessment a “psychological fallacy”, I have over 15 years experience in risk assessment. Your qualifications are . . .?</p>
<p>And if your “fallacy” were indeed fallacious, the entire insurance industry would be out of business. I am not likely to be involved in an accident that will cause death or serious injury to another person. Yet I carry insurance against that event because if I am so involved, I could lose everything I have. It is not likely that my house will catch fire, and yet I carry insurance against that eventuality.</p>
<p>That’s the statistical risk assessment.</p>