Supervised teenage alcohol use at home is not a good idea

How do you effectively teach your children about alcohol?

Minister of State with responsibility for Primary Care Róisín Shortall has said she felt parents should not be giving their children alcohol at home in an attempt to teach “responsible drinking”, and are sometimes permitting binge drinking at home to try to prevent it going on in unsupervised circumstances elsewhere.

In response, the spokeswoman for the National Parents’ Council has stated she felt that children should be taught about consuming alcohol in a safe and responsible environment, under parental observation, to encourage a healthy respect for the substance.

These are clearly very contrasting views regarding how to educate young people about alcohol; how to prevent them from drinking too much alcohol outside the home, and how to prevent the dreadful epidemic of binge-drinking and its harmful consequences from getting worse.

Comments

#1. Posted by Donal Kiernan PRO for IAAAC on January 23, 2012

This needs to be a focused debate that addresses the societal attitude towards alcohol consumption and its broader implications.As people start to drink we cannot foretell who will become dependent, so the later the onset of the first drink the better.Remember that alcohol is actually a drug. In the context of children and teenagers they are going through a developmental maturation process and the addition of any chemical substance to their system has an impact. We have a responsibility to our children by role modelling standards and behaviour. As a parent it is my responsibility to be that, and act in my child’s and everyone else’s child, best interest at all times, no matter how difficult that is for me. The debate needs not to be about who is right or who is wrong, but about what is best for our children and young persons. How do we address this. Donal Kiernan is the PRO for the Irish Association of Alcohol And addiction Counsellors, the governing body for accrediting addiction counsellors.