Should we let our kids drink at home?

I found this Op-Ed piece in the Wallstreet Journal. What are your thoughts? Mine are below.

Drinks at Home: Here’s Looking at You, Kids
September 11, 2007; Page A17

In regard to "A Toast to the Family" by Stanton Peele (editorial page, Aug. 31), about parents who allow teens to drink alcohol at home and the laws targeting the parents:

My parents allowed my friends and me to drink at my house. It is only now, 20 years later, that I understand and respect how brave and protective my parents’ actions were. I say "brave" because they were breaking the law and could have been prosecuted. I say "protective" because they knew that having us in the backyard kept us safe, away from the much more risky activity of drinking and driving around town like so many other teens.

While most parents hope that their teenagers will not drink alcohol or smoke marijuana, the reality is that 75% of high-school seniors will have tried alcohol by the time they graduate, and 50% will have tried marijuana. In addition to allowing us to drink beer in the backyard, my parents made it clear that my friends and I could always call them for a ride home from a party. I understood clearly that they much preferred a call from an intoxicated teenager asking for a ride home than a drunken teenager driving his drunken friends home.

My parents’ goal for their two kids was not to practice the unrealistic mission of abstinence, but to keep us safe by encouraging responsibility. In this regard, they were incredibly successful. We never got into trouble with the law and never got into an accident or a fight that involved alcohol. We learned how to drink in a way that didn’t lead to injury to others or ourselves.

Tony Newman
Communications Director
Drug Policy Alliance
New York

I guess I reject this argument. I know it is not necessarily fair for me to have an opinion about how parents should raise their children being as though I am not a parent, but I do have parents and I think it is fair for me to comment on how I think they should have raised me.

It seems as though in today’s society we have gone from a preventative parenting model to a harm reduction model. Back in the old days when …um…someone had to walk five miles to school uphill both ways in the snow, it seemed like the message was clear: Don’t kill people. Don’t drink until it is legal. Don’t have pre-marital sex. The message was crystal clear.

Now, that’s not to say that kids never did any of those things – because we know like any generation of teenagers, it is their fabric to be defiant. But it seems like kids were smarter back then. At least smart enough to try really hard to KEEP the fact that they were drinking or having sex from their parents.

Why did they try so hard to keep this from their parents? Because they knew that if their parents found out they had deliberately disobeyed their orders, there would be hell to pay. They would get a smack on the ass, the would get a laundry list of chores. They would be grounded. They would actually get PUNISHED. Geeze. Does anyone punish their kids anymore? Or do we just accomodate them?

Do we just throw our hands in the air and say well, if you are going to be a "fuck-up" you might as well fuck up at the house so I can watch and laugh. And actually, if I was a child – or teenager, and my parents said that I was incapable of making good decisions and practicing the "unrealistic goal of abstinence," (as quoted by the author), I would be offended.

That means that my parents automatically assume I am going to make the wrong decision. So rather than educating my and guiding me, and supporting me to hopefully make the right decision, they take away my ability to make any decision at all. So that’s where the harm-reduction model comes in. If we can’t empower our children to make good decisions, let’s make bad decisions for them. At least then when people are getting hauled off to jail, it will be us as the parents and not our precious, mindless, inept children.

Now. When I was younger, my parents spent a great deal of time telling me what I should and shouldn’t do. They spent a great deal of time teaching me right from wrong and then secretly crossing their fingers hoping I had listened to what they said. And OF COURSE I screwed up. (I just waited until I reached the legal drinking age to do so). But there is so much advice that they gave me that I DID listen to. That I did heed. And that I DID take their word for. Why do we now automatically assume that any advice we might impart on our children will be lost? With that kind of attitude, it surely will be.

I also had parents that offered me champagne on New Years. Or a taste of their beer on 4th of July. Or offered me a glass of wine for Christmas. But I also grew more and more offended every time they did this. I made it clear under no uncertain terms that I DID NOT want a drink. That I didn’t think it was right. And that they upset me by offering me the option. So much so that arguments would last for days between my father and I when he would ignore my repeated attempts to refuse alcohol.

It got so bad one New Years that I literally smashed the champagne glass out of my dad’s hand because he was relentless in his pursuits. Now anyone that has ready my diary knows I have had my fair share of drinking issues. But what I can safely say is that I didn’t drink a drop of alcohol until I was legally able to do so. I was an adult and responsible for my own demise. I made the choices to make the mistakes that I made. I didn’t allow my parents to make them for me.

Who knows how life would be different if I had obliged when they continually offered me special occaision drinks. It could have been better – it could have been worse. But what I do know is that when I violated the law by drinking and driving, it wasn’t because my parents had given me the opportunity to do so.

And being that I work in the world’s largest and most renown Chemical Dependency Treatment Center, I also know that the younger the age of first consumption of alcohol, the higher the propensity for that individual to develop alcoholism over a lifetime. Statistics show that if age of first use is between 12 and 15, an individual has a 4 in 10 chance of becoming addicted over a lifetime. If age of first use is after age 21, an individual has only a 1 in 10 chance of becoming addicted – which is about what you see in the general population.

I am not even necessarily saying it is "wrong" to offer your children rides home if they get too trashed or to give them a beer to drink when they get done mowing the lawn. But what I DO deny about the article is that there is an "unrealistic mission of abstinence." The fact is it’s NOT unrealistic. It’s only

unrealistic if you never give your child the opportunity to priove you wrong. If you take away his choice to show that abstinence at least until legal age of consent is possible. You automatically set the bar so low for your children that they will surely succeed rather than they might possibly fail.

And that’s another thing. It seems like these days we are so afraid for our children to fail at something. Even if they do something that is worthy of a failing grade, we change the grade so they avoid seeing the "F." But I will tell you it is through my failures that I was strengthened. It is through my failures that I learned more than my successes. It is also through my failures that I learned what I wanted in life – and also what I DIDN’T want. Failing can be a valuable lesson. So can succeeding. But not if you are only succeeding because the bar is so low you have little or no choice or control over the matter.

In the last paragraph the author states that his parents were successful in their mission to prevent their two children from having any legal or other drinking issues. But itis also fair to say that there are parents who allowed that type of behavior who were not successful. Just as much, there are parents who did not allow that type of behavior who were both successful and not successful. That is roughly akin to me saying that my parents allowed me to wear black socks growing up which is why I was attracted to black men. There is so much more at play here then the parent’s decisions as to whether the child will have issues with drinking at some point.

Now that we have recognized that as a relatively weightless variable, let’s re-address the fact that it is our job to instil in our children right from wrong and good from bad – even if they don’t always make the right decision on their own. The parents in this article sacrificed the ability of their children to choose right from wrong while they clearly chose "wrong" themselves, knowing the possible legal ramifications of conducting such behavior with minors. Parents go to jail for these sorts of things. They lose custody of their children. So rather than saying "Do as I say, but not as I do," why don’t we set a good example for our children and give them the education they need to make their own decisions. It’s the hardest thing to do as a parent – to watch your child screw up when you could have jumped in and protected them. But it is also the best lesson they will learn.

Look at a parallel situation. So many of our youth grow up in ghettos and run-down, crime ridden neighborhoods. It is a statistical likelihood that that young person will grow up and either get shot, shoot someone, or know someone that was shot and/or killed by gun violence. So should those parents provide semi-automatics to their children to play with in the alley since "they are going to do it anyway?" Sure, they might shoot soda cans and squirrels. But they also might shoot each other. Sure the kids who’s parents allow them to have alcohol parties at their homes might grow up to live successful, happy lives. But they might also get bombed and run into problems.

It looks like no matter whether we give them the option, children are going to make mistakes. That there are just some things we as parents can’t control, and that there are countless others we CAN control. Why should hosting a "drinking party" for underage kids be any different than hosting a "gun party" for kids?

What we also fail to focus on here is the parents that DO get caught hosting these type of parties and the ramifications they must serve. I hear stories day in and day out given the line of work I am in. And it happens. So essentially, then those children that are supposed to be learning about safe consumption are also learning about how to visit mom in prison. What is the trade off here? Is it worth it for a child to have to sit and talk to his mom on a telephone through a piece of bullet proof glass just so he could have a few drinks with his friends? Or would he be better off being parented to believe that underage drinking is not an option and then hope for the best – but whether he encounters problems or not, he knows his MOM WILL BE THERE FOR HIM TO SUPPORT HIM. She won’t be in prison.

Like my parents were there for me. I couldn’t have survived my DWIs without them. But they would have done me no good if they were hauled off to jail for allowing illegal substance consumption for minors. Or worse yet if one of those minors drove home and killed someone.

It’s time that parents play a more active role in parenting the child for prevention rather than helping them clean up their messes after they are made. Rather than doing your daughter’s homework for her because she put it off, instill in her the importance of taking education seriously. And when she ignores your advice, allow her to feal the full effects of her consiquences whether it be a failing grade, a missed college opportunity etcetera. You are doing your child a disservice if you constantly clean up their messes for them. Or worse yet, assume your daughter won’t do her homework and do it for her before it even becomes a time problem.

Kids are smart. They are often more smart than we give them the opportunity to be. If we never give them the opportunity to make the right decisions on their own, they never will. If we never give them the opportunity to try and fail, they will never learn from that either.

The other day I was driving in the car with Chewie and Isaiah. Chewie was on the phone. Isaiah was trying to tell his dad something. When Chewie asked Isaiah to hold on for a moment while he finished his call, Isaiah (the 4 year old) brilliantly proclaimed "But dad, you have TWO ears!"

And he was right. So he immidiately got off the phone and listened to his son with both of his ears. Because as a kid, that’s what he needs, and what he deserves – a parent that will listen.