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Teen Alcohol Abuse: What Every Parent Should Know
Teen Alcohol Abuse:  What Every Parent Should Know       

Does your teenager have a drinking problem?  More importantly, would you know if the answer was yes?   Meet smart, sensible Traci, who was drinking in the basement of her home one night while her parents were asleep upstairs.  She was drunk, and she got into a car driven by a kid she was drinking with. They crashed – and her life, and her parents’ lives, have never been the same.  And then there’s Koren, who went from innocent 14-year-old to blacked-out sorority girl, and wrote a memoir about her 10 years of teenage binge drinking. 

Join Koren, along with Traci and her parents, two leading alcohol experts and our host Dr. Winnie King, on this special episode of Keeping Kids Healthy.  See these families’ stories as they lived them, and learn how to prevent YOUR kids – and yourself! – from making the same mistakes. Find out about the new drinks on the market that are targeting young girls, about the dramatic increase in binge drinking among those girls, and about the serious lifelong damage that teen alcohol abuse can cause.  Above all, learn what to do.  Most parents don’t realize when their teens have a drinking problem, and they don’t know how to prevent or treat it.  Be the exception: find out what you can do to keep your child safe.


Guests:

Peter Rogers, MD - Pediatrician, Teen Alcohol Counselor, Columbus Childrens Hospital, Columbus, OH; Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health.
Aaron White, PhD - Psychiatrist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC
Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon - Documentary Producers and Authors; Produced Smashed: Toxic Tales of Teens and Alcohol (HBO-documentary, IDA Nomination: Best Documentary/Academy-UCLA Film Fest 2004); Authors of Safe Road Home: Stop Your Teen From Drinking & Driving 
Traci Gonzales - teen severely injured in drunk driving accident
Susan and Mico Gonzales - Tracy’s  Parents
Koren Zailckas - Teen Drinker and Author of Smashed

Tips:
  • Talk to your kids early about the dangers of alcohol and maintain an active dialogue about it.
  • In those conversations, discuss the damaging physical and mental effects of alcohol on the brain, both short and long-term, and how drinking affects one’s decisions
  • Don’t have these talks with your kids when they have been drinking; wait till they sober up, or they won’t listen to you or remember what you’re saying!
  • If your kids challenge you by saying you’re a hypocrite – because you’re telling them not to drink when you did drink – tell them that if you had known then what you know now about the damage that drinking causes, you would not have done it.
  • Keep a close eye on what they’re doing with friends, even though they don’t want you to; if they’re drinking in the basement with their buddies, you need to know about it BEFORE they tell you they’re going out for a drive.
  • Don’t hide your head in the sand and assume everything is OK just because your kids say they’re not drinking; even good kids will often try to keep parents in the dark about their drinking, to avoid disapproval or interference.
  • Counteract your kids’ need to be reckless by keeping them busy – teens who are involved in lots of extracurricular activities drink less..
  • Create a “rescue code” for your kids that means “come get me, my designated driver is drinking” -- but use a set of phrases whose meaning isn’t clear to other listeners, so kids won’t be embarrassed to call home and ask for help in front of friends
  • Give kids the skills they need to recognize if the person who is supposed to be their ride home has been drinking.
Resources:
National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence
www.ncadd.org
1-800-NCA-CALL

Alcoholics Anonymous
www.alcoholics-anonymous.org

Also: For more help in your local area, look in your “Yellow Pages” under “Alcohol.”