Mamas Don’t Let Your Kids Grow Up to Drink and Party
The secret to teetotalling kids may have been discovered by a teen with a taste for the straight life.
Chelsea Lynn Jurman, a seventeen-year-old from New York, is one of forty finalists in the new incarnation of the Westinghouse Science competition, with her social science study of what influence talk of parents’ wild party days has on their teen’s drinking habits.
The news, Jurman found, is not good. If you talk about teenage indiscretions in front of your kids, her survey of one hundred twenty-three teens shows they’re more likely to believe that it’s acceptable to do so themselves. If the kids didn’t hear much about their parents drinking as kids, they were more likely to just say no.
I’m divided on how I feel about this study. I’ve always felt there’s a delicate balance between lying to our kids and revealing too much. It’s my problem with kids and parents meeting on Facebook – not everyone in the family needs to know EVERYTHING about each other. Telling kids about your youthful indiscretions, then instructing them not to copy you, is literally the “do as I say, not as I do” model of parenting – which works, um, never.
On the other hand, if my now three-year-old daughter one days asks if I had any alcohol as a child, I don’t think I can lie to her. “No, Mommy waited until she was twenty-one and in perfect accordance with all laws” is A. a lie B. not realistic and C. likely to make a teenager roll her eyes and walk away. I’ll lose that “teachable moment” we’re always searching for. I’d like to think I’ll divulge the bits that are most important for a growing teen – “Yes, I drank, but I never drove with any alcohol in my system,” or “Yes, but I never drank at a party where I didn’t know everyone, and trust everyone.”
My colleague Shannon discussed the interesting theory that some parents think they need to drink FOR the kids, but this isn’t a matter of how you model drinking behaviors today (which I do think is an important part of developing appropriate attitudes toward alcohol). Parents have to decide how much of their past they can edit. Is there anything you’ll be holding back?
Image: Scientific American
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I agree with Laura. Very interesting stuff.
We don’t lie to our kids but we try not to tell them everything. Luckily, both my husband and myself were pretty good kids when it came to substance abuse.
I was pretty straitlaced in high school and a drunken whore in college, basically. I do intend to talk with my kids when they are older about the kind of stuff that can go down when you’re not in control, and share some of the things I, or my friends, experienced. I’d hate to have them make the same mistakes I did (I know they will make different ones) so I want them to learn some defensive strategies and to maybe think before making an irrevocably bad decision. By older, though, I mean high school or as soon as I realize they are experiementing.
For some reason, Jeanne, you always post the stuff I’m interested in. Very cool article. I wish I could see a copy of the survey she issued. I’m curious how she worded the questions.
Considering I’m a lifelong teetotaler, talking to my kids someday won’t really be an issue. I can tell them I tasted champagne on my honeymoon at age 21, and I didn’t like it. Yep, I was the nerdy kid who liked reading books too much to party.
When I was 8 my mother took me to the funeral of a 16-year-old girl who had been killed while riding in a car driven by a drunk classmate. The other passenger, another 16-year-old girl, suffered severe brain damage. The driver walked away with a broken arm and some scratches. To this day I am extremely cautious about drinking and driving. It made a huge impression on me, even at the age of 8. Parents, if you want to prevent your kids from drinking and driving, show them the potential consequences, up close and personal. Nothing drives that truth home like seeing a beautiful teenager in a coffin.