Parents need to teach their children about the dangers of alcohol

Rather than turning a blind eye, parents need to give a clear message about the dangers of underage drinking, a child and adolescent psychiatrist tells Helen O’Callaghan.

PARENTS need to give teens a clear, unambiguous message that they disapprove of underage drinking.

So says consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr Bobby Smyth, who sits on the board of Alcohol Action Ireland.

“Parents are underestimating their influence — they’re failing to give clear messages about what’s unhealthy.”

Irish teens are drinking too much, too soon and dangerously. In a 2011 report on drinking among 15 and 16-year-olds across Europe, Irish students reported drinking one-third more on their latest drinking day than the European average.

In the 30 days prior to the survey, half had drunk alcohol (48% boys and 52% girls), four in 10 had more than five drinks on a single drinking occasion and almost a quarter had been drunk on at least one occasion.

Last month, Ian O’Sullivan and Eimear Murphy, TY students at Coláiste Treasa, Kanturk, won the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition.

Their project explored whether parents’ drinking habits and attitudes to their children drinking was a potential cause of hazardous drinking in teens.

“On Junior Cert results night, a lot [of students] were drinking. Everyone says it’s peer pressure but in the same group of friends some were drinking and others weren’t, so we felt there must be another reason, not just peers, so we thought maybe parents,” says Eimear, 16, who doesn’t drink alcohol.

They surveyed 902 fifth and sixth-year students, as well as the parents of 360 of them. They found when parents believe it’s acceptable for teens to drink alcohol on special occasions, they’re up to four times more likely to engage in hazardous drinking than other adolescents.

All evidence shows the Cork students got it right, says Smyth.

It’s a myth that introducing children to alcohol early at home helps develop a low risk relationship with alcohol.

“It’s not just ineffective, but counterproductive. It actually increases risk that children will drink more heavily and in more harmful ways.”

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Source: Helen O’Callaghan, Irish Examiner, 21/02/15