• 2012 activity >>
  • Meet the Drinkaware 'Mumtank' panel
• 2011 activity >>
  • Your kids and alcohol launch event
  • Why let good times go bad? 2011
• 2010 activity >>
  • Why let good times go bad? 2010
  • Newquay Safe Partnership & the Got Your Back Cafe
  • Why waste your week being wasted?
  • Hoof it!
  • Drink less, be more
• 2009 activity >>
  • Alcohol and young people: what's the attraction?
  • Alcohol: what's the attraction? Young people speak out
  • Alcohol and redundancy
  • Drink less, miss less
  • Why let good times go bad
  • Topshop and Topman staff event
  • What's Britain drinking this Christmas?
• 2008 activity >>
  • Point of sale campaign
  • Alcohol: how much is too much?
  • Tips for a Christmas to remember

How should we talk to our children about alcohol?  What can we say that really will make a difference? That was the central question discussed at a roundtable event to launch Drinkaware’s ‘Your kids and alcohol’ campaign.  

Speaking from experience

Keynote speaker and Mumsnet co-founder Carrie Longton said that what really made a difference with her 12-year-old daughter was telling her a story she’d read on a Mumsnet forum about a teenage girl who got so drunk on vodka that she choked on her own vomit.

“I told my daughter that story, and I could see it really had got through,” said Carrie, who was speaking to an audience that included  15 parenting bloggers.  “Teenagers care about one another – they care deeply about one another’s safety – and that story is a very scary and tragic one.”

Warning kids about the short-term damage alcohol can do – as opposed to the long-term dangers, which can seem a long way off to teenagers – is also important, said Carrie.  “We’ve done some work on alcohol and teenagers that found youngsters who’ve drunk even small amounts are more likely to get mugged, to get into a fight, to have unprotected sex and to get pregnant.  And if that’s not enough to scare a teenager, it’s enough to scare a parent into taking this issue seriously and giving it some thought and attention.”

Set some rules

It was important too, she said, to realise that not all kids were the same.  “The rules and strategies that work for one child won’t work for all,” she said.  And overall, one vital point was: rules around drink are ok.  “Research backs up that if parents set rules around drinking, young people are less likely to get drunk.

“This means that if you have a partner you need to agree on the rules you’re going to set – which might be less simple than it sounds.  Adults almost always have some baggage where alcohol is concerned.  But I think that getting the facts and information together and sitting down as a family to work out your family rules is a good way forward – much as we’re encouraged to do with internet safety. You need a family agreement on alcohol that everyone agrees to live with and abide by.”

When things go too far

Other speakers at the event included Superintendant Julie Whitmarsh of East Cornwall police, who spoke about the fallout in Newquay after alcohol-fuelled camping parties organised by youngsters celebrating the end of the exam season. 

Some youngsters had died after falling over cliffs, she said, and many others had ended up totally inebriated.  The youngsters came from across the UK, and the current police approach was to call parents, even in the middle of the night, to ask them to come to collect their children if they were found drunk and needed to be taken home.

The right approach

Parenting expert Eileen Hayes said she thought that being honest with your child was the best policy, and suggested that parents should tell their child that alcohol was ok – but in moderation.  She spoke, too, about the fact that kids who drink are often kids who are bored.

What the bloggers said after the event

"I was clubbing by the age of fourteen but burnt out by the time I was nineteen.  I would often drink so much I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing.  I did things I cringe about now and got into situations that, thankfully, I managed to get myself out of, but now I’m a parent to a teenager, I can only hope that he does as I say, not as I did."

witwitwoo.com

"I always believed that if you used the ‘continental’ approach of allowing a small glass of wine from about the age of fourteen years on special occasions they would grow up with a responsible attitude to alcohol. It seems that I am wrong and there is now evidence to suggest that the earlier a child starts drinking the higher their chances of becoming dependent on it as an adult. Oh…dear…"

cherishedbyme.com

"It sometimes feels as though the stakes for kids and alcohol are higher today than when I was a teenager. It feels as though more kids (and especially girls) are drinking to the point of oblivion, and putting themselves at huge risk. And I'm increasingly worried by how you protect daughters from all that goes with that..."

whosthemummy.co.uk

"After participating in the Drinkaware debate about kids and alcohol I've realised children are aware of alcohol from a very early age. As young as 8 they may develop ideas about the kind of drinker they will be. Only in the last week my 5-year-old daughter told me wine makes grown-ups silly (not I might add from observation), asked me what a spirit measure was for, and wanted to know why someone had left a half drunk beer bottle in the street."

aresidence.co.uk

Our brand new Parents area has all the expert advice, tips and facts parents need to start discussions with their children about alcohol no matter their age.