The result: “It’s really the collection of them all that seems to be effective.”
Dr. Tim Naimi, a physician and alcohol researcher at Boston Medical Center
and senior author of the recent paper, said, “What parents do — the way they drink and whether they drink at all — is more important than what they might say about alcohol.” Genetic factors in alcoholism, he said, have been emphasized too strongly, and even when there is a strong family history of alcohol problems, parents can model good and sensible behavior in the home: “A lot more than genetics runs in families.”
There is also a relationship between the way that kids drink and the way
that their peers drink, though it’s hard to argue cause and effect; adolescents may be influenced by the practices of their peers, but they may also choose to associate with those whose habits most appeal to them.
“It’s a high risk time to be out on the road.”
A study published in February in the journal Pediatrics
that looked at deaths among people under 21 years old in motor vehicle crashes involving alcohol found that, as a whole, more restrictive policies about drinking were associated with fewer deaths.
Every parent of every adolescent, I would bet, at some point lies awake
and worries about the mixing of alcohol and driving, whether you’re worrying about your own child drinking, or about someone else who’s driving, or even about the danger of someone in another car altogether.
The mix of drinking and driving is as dangerous to adolescents as you think it is,
dangerous when the adolescents are driving, and also when they are passengers.
“The data that have come out in the time since this generation’s parents were teenagers really demonstrates the harm of drinking at a young age,” he said, from the increased risk of long-term problems with alcohol to the changes in brain structure and function
that we see in people who drink heavily during adolescence.
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