Curbing Teenage Drinking by Sue Atkins, The Official Guide to Teenagers and Parenting
Sir Liam Donaldson the Medical Chief launches five-point guide
for parents on how to stop children abusing alcohol
As all my friends know, I like a glass of wine or two, but teenage
drinking is a very big problem here in the UK and it needs your support, your confidence and your belief in your own opinions
and values around responsible drinking to help make a change.
It starts with you.
Here Alexandra Topping from
the Guardian newspaper asks a teenager, a parent and a medical expert if they think the guidance will have any impact on teenager
drinking Link to this video
You are the key to curbing your teenagers' harmful and potentially dangerous drinking
habits, according to the chief medical officer.
Launching a five-point plan for parents to tackle teenage drinking,
Sir Liam Donaldson, warned that no child aged under 15 should be drinking at all, and any child aged 15 to 17, if drinking,
should be doing so infrequently and under the supervision of a parent or carer.
Donaldson advised parents to intervene
to control their children's drinking. "Parents who turn a blind eye or condone children who go out into the park and slump
into bed drunk at 3 o'clock in the morning are far more likely to have children who grow up to be problem drinkers," he said.
The
children's secretary, Ed Balls, together with the health secretary, Alan Johnson, said at the launch that parents had told
them they did not want a change in the law on buying or drinking alcohol, but instead wanted to know what was safe and what
was wise.
There was wide acceptance among parents that the scale of drinking by children and adolescents was a problem,
they said.
Ed Balls added: "Parents instinctively know supervised drinking is much better, but how you do it is
really hard," he said.
"I don't think you can underestimate how difficult it is being a parent of a teenager today."
A
third of a million children aged 11-15 get drunk in a typical week.
Every year 6,000 children of their age are admitted
to hospital because of alcohol.
Donaldson's guidelines for parents urge you to take a tough line.
Research
shows that parents' attitude to children's drinking can make the difference, he said.
"The things that come out very,
very strongly are the importance of the family. Where parents don't condone drinking and point out the consequences and the
health effects, research shows that children start drinking later, if at all, and drink at moderate levels."
The guidelines
urge parents to:
• Lead by example and establish family values on alcohol;
• Educate and inform
children of the harm drinking can do;
• Set boundaries – make it clear that children should not drink and
that drink parties, clandestine drinking and getting drunk are not acceptable;
• Encourage positive alternatives,
such as sports and clubs;
• Challenge the stereotype of the heroic, macho or amusing drinker.
Donaldson
also points to the real physical harm that alcohol can do to children, whose brains are still developing – risking damage
to the white matter in the prefrontal area of the brain and the hippocampus, he said. Such damage would impact on their emotions
and behaviour and could also affect their long-term memory and ability to find words.
The belief in some middle-class
families that you can teach children to drink by giving them wine with meals, as it is assumed happens in some Mediterranean
countries, is not founded on any evidence, Donaldson said.
"France has problems with drinking," Johnson added. "They
are currently going through legislation to raise the age of purchase from 16 to 18. Whereas it was probably true that drinking
as part of social interaction and not to get drunk was the norm, binge drinking is now a problem in France."
Ed Balls,
the Government Minister for Children, Schools and Families accepted that the drinking culture exhibited on television and
in the bragging about drinking exploits on radio programmes was a problem.
"But the link between what parents do themselves
and what they say to their children about the right way to do things is far more of an influence on children's drinking behaviour
than parents are ¬currently aware of," he said.
So as a parent of two teenage kids I know first hand how difficult
it can be to get a balance as Will recently had another “gathering” at our house. He invited his friends round
for a Darts Tournament and as he is a year younger than his peers it’s always tricky for us to let him have “street
cred” and be safe. So they are allowed to bring two cans each and we stay diplomatically “out of the way”
but around to keep an eye on things.
The great thing is if you relax, don’t try to hard to get involved and keep
the lines of friendly communication open we were invited to join in …… how cool was that?
Responsible drinking
is something we can all get involved in – it’s about not being frightened to pass on your values about alcohol
and teaching your kids about balance.
I got it wrong sometimes at the Pied Bull in Norbury a few times back in the
80’s so will your kids. But it’s not just about merely judging and criticising them when they get it wrong but
educating them so they proactively learn from their mistakes – it’s about offering an open and friendly helping
hand to lift them up not a clenched fist of disappointment which leaves them down.
So ask yourself:
•
What do I think is acceptable to me as a parent?
• How do I pass on my thoughts and beliefs to my kids?
•
Do I talk to my kids about the dangers of too much alcohol?
• What’s stopping me?
• How do
my kids learn what is safe and what’s not?
• Am I good role model for what I believe?
• How
do I talk about alcohol?
• Am I confident in what I say?
• What small change could I make this week
to make my kids safer, wiser or starting to think for themselves about this very important issue?
February is Pass
It Forward Month! So if you have found this article helpful and thought provoking please pass it forward to your friends,
colleagues, schools and nurseries....... because as they say ... “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
Author's Bio Sue Atkins is a Parent Coach, former Deputy Head with 22 years teaching
experience, mother to two teenage children and is an NLP Master Practitioner and Trainer trained by Paul McKenna. She has
written many books on self esteem, toddlers and teenagers and has a collection of Parenting Made Easy Toolkits available from
her website. She is also the author of "Raising Happy Children for Dummies" one in the black and yellow series published worldwide.
To receive her free newsletter bursting with practical tips and helpful advice from toddler to teen log onto positive-parents.com.
Teenage Girls and Smoking (The Full Article)
The issue of young people smoking is an important one because
it can affect the health of an entire society as those young smokers grow older and continue in the habit. People would not
have to go through the difficult process of stopping smoking if they had never started in the first place. For many people,
their first puff on a cigarette happens during their teenage years and this forms the basis for their addiction to nicotine.
What may start innocently enough as one forbidden cigarette in an effort to be "cool" can actually develop into a serious
life-threatening habit. While not all of them will go on to become dependent on cigarettes, the numbers who do so are significant
enough to warrant concerted efforts to educate young people to the dangers of smoking. And yet many young people all ready
know the risks involved and decide to smoke anyway. Despite all of the information now available on how harmful smoking is
to the health of young people, the smoking rates among teenage girls is actually on the increase in some countries. This article
examines teenage girls as a microcosm of this wider phenomenon and examines some of the reasons and rationalisations given
for girls to begin smoking during their teenage years.
A study involving approximately 3,000 teenage girls in Britain
and Canada aged between 11 and 18 years shows how smoking feeds on the insecurities of young girls. About 20% of the sample
surveyed in the study smoked, with the habit most prevalent amongst girls aged 15 and 16 years. Published in the Post Graduate
Medical Journal, the report showed that those who smoked cigarettes were 30% more likely to be overweight and prone to over-eating.
Interestingly enough, it is these girls that tend to be the most image-conscious, being twice as likely as their peers to
worry about their body shape.
Although most of the girls stated that they smoked to help them relax, many of them specifically
mentioned weight control as the primary reason that they started smoking. About a quarter of the girls said that smoking reduced
their appetite and felt that it worked as a substitute for eating. The majority of girl smokers wanted to be considerably
thinner than they currently were and associated with this attitude was the increased risk of developing an eating disorder.
Over 30% of the girls surveyed were afraid that they would eat more and put on weight if they stopped smoking and considered
this a significant disincentive to quit.
The disturbing message contained in a report like this is that so many teenage
girls were experiencing angst at what they considered their unsatisfactory body image. This may not be surprising when you
take into account that they are constantly bombarded by the unrealistic images of perfection in advertising and the media
in general. What is more distressing is the seemingly conscious decision that they are better to smoke and keep off a few
kilograms or pounds of weight at the cost of doing serious long-term damage to their health. This may be why this group appears
so resistant to the antismoking message.
Girls were three times more likely to take up smoking after they started having
their periods. Part of the explanation for this is that they mistakenly perceived that the changes which were taking place
with their bodies were signs of "fatness". In fact, some of the British girls that took part in the survey claimed that they
had lost a stone or more since puberty. Interestingly, although the girls who did smoke were considered moderately overweight,
those girls who were classified as very obese were less likely to smoke, perhaps because they were less concerned about their
weight or had abandoned efforts to control it.
Smoking does burn up some calories and may serve to suppress appetite
but the long-term cost of these changes is far too great. Exercise will also burn up calories and you will feel better for
it. You are less likely to exercise if you smoke and you start to cough whenever you try to exert yourself. The lack of physical
fitness that often accompanies the smoking habit would seem to be less than helpful in one's efforts to create a positive
self-image.
While older women who smoke may on average be thinner they are also much more likely to have lung cancer
and die prematurely. Weight is only ever one part of the image equation and while these girls are young they do not appreciate
that smoking can cause other long-term cosmetic changes such as premature aging or increased wrinkling and greying of the
skin. They do not consider that they will have to give up smoking later on in life if they want to have a baby. Risking one's
own health is one thing but the health of their family should take precedence over any selfish concerns they have about their
weight. They may think that they can quit at any time without appreciating that, for both physiological and sociological reasons,
women generally find it harder to give up smoking than men. They may also not know that, on average, women are more at risk
from smoking related diseases than men.
Other factors, such as peer pressure and the desire to "fit in" obviously have
a role to play in a teenage girl's decision to smoke, as does their level of emotional wellbeing. Smoking may be seen as a
glamorous or dangerous thing to do which is linked to the image that a particular individual wishes to portray. It is interesting,
for example, that of the girls surveyed, those who drank alcohol were about seven times more likely to smoke as those who
did not.
What this study shows is that the teenage girls concern about their weight may be a crucial factor in their
decision to start smoking. Paradoxically, it also seems to be an important factor in their decision to continue smoking because
they fear that they will put on even more weight if they stop. The problem of alleviating the concerns of young females regarding
their body image is a very broad one that needs to be addressed by society as a whole. What we can do is emphasise to teenage
girls the dangers of smoking are serious and that it is not worth sacrificing their health for the sake of a few pounds.
source site: click here
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Talking To Your Teenager about Drugs by Sue Atkins, the Official Guide to Teenagers and Parenting
"So
what do we do? Anything - something. So long as we don't just sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else.
If we wait until we've satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late."
Lee Iacocca Former Chairman of Chrysler
Corporation
Communication is essential at any stage of your child’s development but it is particularly important
during the transitional stage of adolescence. So here are a few tried and tested tips for talking about drugs to your teenager:
• Begin with a non-judgemental attitude.
• Don't push your teen but be open and receptive.
•
Don't try to share your experiences and don't assume you know all the issues involved e.g. you may have smoked pot as a teenager
but nowadays 'skunk' - a much stronger version grown from specially cultivated seeds - is more common.
15 years ago,
smoking pot was likely to make you giggly, hungry and perhaps slightly dizzy whereas skunk is more likely to cause hallucinogenic
effects, and carries a bigger risk of anxiety, panic and paranoia.
• Remember it's normal for teenagers to experiment,
whether in terms of music, sports or alchol.
• Many young people don't want to talk to their parents about drugs
but will talk to other people - try to see this normal teenage behaviour rather than rejection.
• Make sure
your teenager knows where to go for information if they need it.
• Talk about legal drugs as well as illegal
ones - smoking, alcohol, caffeine (especially energy drinks like Red Bull) and diet pills.
• Drug counsellors
use 5 key questions when discussing a client's experience: What? Why? When? Where? How?
So bear those questions in
mind before you start to talk with your teenager and plan what sort of things you’d like to say and visualise saying
them – notice your body language and your tone of voice and imagine everything going really well
and see yourself and your teenager looking relaxed.
• Drug services do not just offer help to teenagers, they
are also there for parents who need support and will be very happy to answer any of your questions or offer suggestions about
tackling difficult topics.
If a serious problem ever develops, remember that it will always be down to more than drugs.
It will not necessarily be down to just you either! Look out for early signs that something is bothering your teenager - it
could be a problem with school, friends, their environment, being bullied, exam pressure or even your teenager's mental disposition.
Keep in mind that you can offer advice and support to your teenager but they may not accept it. Just be patient, persistently
supportive and show unconditional love.
It’s an important step to want to talk about drugs with your child, so
pat yourself on the back for taking the initiative. Communication and an open attitude is vital throughout the years of
raising your children and ideally begin to discuss some of these very important issues when your child is still young and
mature enough to understand.
Ask yourself:
• When is it a good time to chat with my teenager naturally
where we won’t be interrupted by the phone, TV or other family members?
• How can I make the conversation
relaxed?
• What is it I want to say?
• How can I listen well?
• Daydream and imagine
the conversation going well and flowing naturally before you fall asleep and ask yourself how you can keep the lines of communication
open easily as your child matures through this time of change and transition.
Remember by talking you are building
bridges not walls.
Author's Bio Sue Atkins is a Parent Coach and Author of "Raising Happy Children
for Dummies" one in the famous black and yellow series. She has written many books on self esteem, toddlers and teenagers
and has a collection of Parenting Made Easy Toolkits available from her website. To find out more about her work and to receive
her free monthly newsletter packed full of practical tips and helpful advice for bringing up happy, confident, well-balanced
teengers go to => www.positive-parents.com
Prescription Medicine Abuse: A Serious Problem
9/2008
Prescription drug
abuse by teens and young adults is a serious problem in the United States. As reported in the Partnership for a Drug-Free America's annual tracking
study:
- 1 in 5 teens has abused a prescription (Rx) pain medication
- 1 in 5 report abusing prescription stimulants and tranquilizers
- 1 in 10 has abused cough medication
Many teens think these drugs are
safe because they have legitimate uses, but taking them without a prescription to get high or “self-medicate”
can be as dangerous – and addictive – as using street narcotics and other illicit drugs.
The Partnership
for a Drug-Free America is making sure that parents, young adults and teens know the very real risks of misusing medicine.
This
section brings together in-depth information on Rx abuse, including a new brochure (in English and Spanish), helpful
articles, detailed drug information, the latest research on usage, relevant articles from the New York Times (see recent front page story) and other publications, video and personal stories. All of this is in addition to the Partnership’s messages on TV, radio and in newspapers and magazines.
PARENTS'
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Q: What age are teens abusing prescription drugs?
A: Kids as young as 12 are trying or using prescription drugs
non-medically -- to get high or for "self-medicating." Pharmaceuticals are often more available to 12 year olds than illicit
drugs because they can be taken from the medicine cabinet at home, rather than marijuana which necessitates knowing someone
who uses or sells the drug. Also, pills may have a perception of safety because they are easier to take than smoking pot or
drinking alcohol and are professionally manufactured in a lab.
Q: What types of prescription drugs are teens abusing?
A: The National Survey on Drug Use and Health identifies 4 types
of prescription medications that are commonly abused — pain relievers, stimulants, sedatives and tranquilizers.
Eleven percent of teens (aged 12-17) reported lifetime non-medical use of pain relievers and four percent reported lifetime
non-medical use of stimulants.
Q: Do different groups abuse different types
of medications?
A: Yes. Painkillers are the most common pharmaceutical abused
by teens, especially by younger teens. Stimulant abuse is more common among older teens and college students than younger
teens. Girls are more likely to be current (past month) abusers of prescription medications than boys (4.3 vs. 3.6 percent).
[Source: 2002 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. ]
Q: What can I do to help to prevent my child from misusing
prescription drugs?
A: One easy way to prevent Rx abuse is to keep all prescription
medication hidden: Parents and family members whose homes teens visit should keep prescription medications out of teens reach,
rather than in the medicine cabinet. You should also talk to your teen and warn them that taking prescription medications
without a doctor’s supervision can be just as dangerous and as potentially lethal as taking illicit drugs. For example,
pain killers are made from opioids, the same substance as in heroin.
Q: How can I talk to my kids about prescription
drug abuse?
A: Starting a conversation about drugs with your kids is never
easy — but it's also not as difficult as you may think. Take advantage of everyday "teachable moments" and, in no time
at all, you'll have developed an ongoing dialogue with your child. Teachable moments refer to using every day events in your
life to point out things you'd like your child you'd like to know about. When you talk to your kids about drugs make
a special point to tell kids how dangerous prescription drug abuse is.
source site: click here
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