Kids who drink are more likely to become victims of crime, develop problems in school and suffer injury in alcohol-related car accidents, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Parents fret that the influences outside the home are too powerful to combat, but NIAAA data show that early education and parental intervention in the pre-teen years can have a dramatic impact on the child's future relationship with alcohol and peer pressure.
Motivations
Identifying childhood alcohol abuse springs from an understanding of the motivating factors behind the drinking. Most kids will experiment with alcohol. It's a highly visible part of modern Western society. Kids encounter it in all elements of pop culture, and for kids who have parents who drink at home, they've grown up with the idea that alcohol is a part of daily life, even if neither parent drinks to excess.
Parents should look for certain risk factors that could push simple experimentation to abuse. Kids who are depressed, have low self-esteem or have trouble fitting into a peer group are more susceptible to alcohol-related problems than those who are well-adjusted, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychology.
Statistics
According to a survey of eighth graders conducted by the NIAAA, 16 percent of respondents reported drinking alcohol in the previous month, while 32 percent recorded alcohol use within the previous year. Despite their average age of 12.5, 64 percent of respondents said that alcohol was easy to get. While the raw numbers are startling, the trend lines for 30-day use are actually lower than they were when tracking by the group "Monitoring the Future" began in 1990. According to MTF data, alcohol use by eighth-graders has declined slightly, but abuse by those who reported use within the prior 30 days has held steady. According to the data, 60 percent of eighth-graders who said they drink reported having five or more drinks once or twice per weekend.
Causes
Teens that drink alcohol are more likely to be sexually active and at earlier ages, according to the NIAAA. They are also more likely to engage in unprotected sex than teens who don't drink, leading to unexpected pregnancies and sexual transmitted diseases. Children who drink are four times more likely to abuse alcohol as adults than those who waited until adulthood to begin drinking, says the NIAAA.
Teens of driving age who drink are at a greater risk of alcohol-related accidents than adults. More than 10,000 die and 40,000 are injured in such crashes each year, as of 2008, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Disorders
Excessive alcohol use in children often indicates concomitant emotional or psychiatric problems that may be driving the behavior. Some of these conditions include conduct disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders, according to a report by Duncan B. Clarke, M.D., Ph.D., for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The children of parents who are substance abusers are also more likely to become abusers themselves, according to the report.
Mitigation
Open communication between parents and their kids is the most effective strategy to help your kids avoid the perils of alcohol abuse. Engage them in discussions of the dangers without preaching and listen to their concerns. Empathize if they talk about the pressures they're under keeping up in school, fitting in or just dealing with puberty. Communication breeds trust, and parents should present themselves as a safe place for kids to get answers and discuss problems, according to the NIAAA. Additionally, parents who are regularly engaged with their children are more likely to notice the behavior changes that accompany alcohol abuse like depression, difficulty sleeping, mood swings and switching to a new group of friends.
References
- American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psycology:
- Medicinenet: Alcohol and Teens
- National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism: Talk to Your Child About Alcohol
- University of Pittsburgh Medical Center: The Natural History of Adolescent Alcohol Use Disorders
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Binge Drinking in Adolescents and College Students
