If you don't want your children to drink alcohol, be very clear that you disapprove of underage drinking, according to two experts on adolescent alcoholism.

• Caitlin Abar from Pennsylvania State University studied 300 teenagers and their parents.
• Abar found that parents who disapprove of underage drinking tended to have students who engage in less drinking, and less binge drinking once they were in college.
• Parental permissiveness was a factor linked to later binge drinking.
• Her research team also found that although parents drinking patterns influence a child's later alcohol use, it was a parent's rules about drinking that had the strongest effect.
• The study appeared in the journal Addictive Behaviors.

Another study, this time from Dutch researcher Haske van der Vorst, found that the European drinking model of having children drink with their parents at home actually encourages out of control drinking.

"The more parents drink at home, the more they drink at other places and the higher the risk for problematic alcohol use later," she said.
 

Labels: prevention, alcohol_abuse, parental_involvement

Posted By: Jane St. Clair