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April 13, 2023
With Alcohol Awareness Month upon us, it’s time to pave the way for real and age-appropriate conversations with your students. What’s more, it’s important to give families the tools they need to do the same. It can be a rocky road to navigate, so let’s gather up some tips and tricks that will help you on your journey!
An Open Dialogue
It may seem tricky to broach such an uncomfortable topic, but the fact is, kids who drink alcohol are more likely to:
- Be victims of a violent crime
- Have serious problems in school
- Be involved in drinking-related traffic crashes
Even if underage drinking is not yet a concern, that doesn’t mean that children aren’t receiving pressure to drink. The best plan of action is to take charge now. Avoiding conversations about alcohol use may give children the impression that underage alcohol use is OK. Furthermore, it’s important to acknowledge the role that friends and classmates can play in a child’s life. As children approach adolescence, their peers’ opinions seem to matter more. Kids will listen, however. Study after study shows that even during teen years, parents and guardians have enormous influence on their children’s behavior. Starting a dialogue can be tough, so explore these pointers to start you on the right path:
- Encourage constant conversation about all kinds of subjects, not just alcohol! Encourage your child to talk about whatever interests him or her. Listen without interruption. Your active listening to your child’s enthusiasm paves the way for conversations about topics that concern you.
- Ask open-ended questions. Encourage your teen to tell you how he or she thinks and feels about the issue you’re discussing. Avoid questions that have a simple “yes” or “no” answer.
- Control your emotions. If you hear something you don’t like, try not to respond with anger. Instead, take a few deep breaths and acknowledge your feelings in a constructive way.
- Make every conversation a “win-win” experience. Don’t lecture or try to “score points” on your teen by showing how he or she is wrong. If you show respect for your child’s viewpoint, he or she will be more likely to listen to and respect yours.
Even when active conversations about alcohol aren’t happening, there are still many ways to continue a silent dialogue. Whether students will admit it or not, the adults in their lives serve as role models. Use this to your (and their) advantage! Here are some suggestions for modeling a healthy relationship with alcohol:
- Refrain from using it as a stress reliever. Instead, model productive coping mechanisms.
- Never drive after drinking. Talk about what your child should do if they’re driving with someone who has been drinking.
- Your child probably shouldn’t be overhearing stories of a night out drinking with your friends, so keep adult conversations strictly in the company of other adults.
- When you are entertaining adults, and kids are in the house, let kids see that you are including alcohol-free beverages and plenty of food, and that you are making sure everyone has a safe ride home.
It can be scary to acknowledge that your child might eventually do something you don’t want them to do. However, encouraging open and honest conversations and setting examples will surely communicate to your child that they don’t have to navigate rocky terrain on their own. And when they do inevitably stumble off the beaten path, they’ll have trusted adults in their circle ready to brush them off, hand them a compass, and lead them on to great things!
When you’re young, it’s easy to be carefree and not too concerned about the future. This is a concept that I know all too well. At 13, I started babysitting to earn money and my father would take half my earnings and put it into a savings account. I remember being so angry! I “earned” it, so shouldn’t I be in charge of how I spend it? It wasn’t until I was 17 and I went to buy my first car that I understood the lesson my father was trying to teach me. It felt so good to buy my used, old Nissan Sentra with the money I'd earned the past four years. Then came the lesson in paying car insurance each month. If it wasn’t paid, my car was parked in the driveway, and I was back on the bus to and from school. Much to my teenage self’s dismay, I was lucky enough to be taught the basics of financial literacy. Economic education, as early as possible, can help set children up for success later in life!
I aced my way through economics, business calculus, and both of my college accounting classes, yet I still felt unprepared for navigating the financial ins and outs of the real world. I remember the day it hit me, too. Last year, I made my first “grown-up” purchase: a used car from my local dealership! As soon as I held the keys, I could feel the clouds opening and the sun shining down. The white paint seemed to sparkle in the daylight. The dealership even went the extra mile and stuck a huge bow on the hood! I was in complete bliss. That is, before the salesman and my stepdad started throwing around terms that sounded foreign to me: APR, principal, amortization. To sound smarter than I felt, I quickly tried to recall lessons from my high school economics class, but I came up empty. It was like a moment from a movie when the main character has the epiphany that sets the whole plot in motion: I am so financially illiterate.