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The Adult Role
As adults who care, we strive to protect children, teens, and young adults from the negative consequences of alcohol and other drug use, by encouraging them to lead healthy lives.
Yet even amidst our desire to keep healthy kids healthy, we may forget something important - the impact of our own values, attitudes, and beliefs.
When it comes to the teen use of alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, and prescription drugs, many of us remain unsure, and this ambivalence may impact our kids.
This e-journal will explore how adults can clarify our attitudes related to substance use. With our beliefs solidified, we can encourage young people to make their own healthy choices.
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Attitudes that Impact
Consider the following questions:
- Is it alright for a five-year-old to have a sip of wine at the dinner table?
- Is it alright for a 16-year-old to have a glass of wine on special occasions with parents? What about every night as part of a civilized, meal-time ritual? Does it make a difference if she lives in a country where drinking is legal at that age?
- How does adult alcohol use impact young people's perceptions of the drug?
- Is there anything wrong with a high school junior smoking marijuana two or three times a month if he is doing well socially, emotionally, and academically?
- Your son has several underage college friends spending fall break with him. If they don't leave the house, would you mind if they had a few beers?
- Should parents really be worried about vaping?
- Is Uber a protective factor that reduces intoxicated driving?
- Does designating a driver encourage young people to use alcohol irresponsibly?
- At what age should a young person be able to use their own prescription medications without the supervision of a parent or school nurse?
- Is it hypocritical for a boarding school to act in loco parentis with a "zero tolerance" policy for underage drinking?
If you were to pose these questions at a faculty or parent meeting, the debate could go on for hours. But how do you feel about them? Uncertain? Conflicted? When we're not sure where we stand as educators and parents, we risk sending mixed messages to our teenagers and students. We may even inadvertently reinforce or glamorize the use of alcohol or other drugs.
How?
Think about these scenarios:
- We call the time adults start to drink "happy hour."
- Movies portray alcohol and marijuana use as a norm for teens.
- Mom and Dad come home from a stressful day and say, "I need a drink!"
- We enshrine alcohol and other drugs in our homes with bars, collections, and related gadgets and décor.
In the age of social media, alcohol is often portrayed as the ultimate stress reliever. The "mommy juice" meme, a reference to wine for the busy mother of young children, infiltrates our newsfeeds. The hashtag #thirstythursday has been used nearly three million times on Instagram.
We must ask ourselves, what type of messages do these cultural touchpoints send to kids? How might they unintentionally overinflate the importance of alcohol, and by proxy other substance use, in our daily lives?
These and other pop culture examples show how real-life adult substance use combines with messages our kids hear and see regularly. Such messages may be a risk factor for teen use. And although there are significant differences between adults and teens consuming alcohol, that difference is rarely, if ever, communicated by such messaging.
As adults in the community, it is important that we recognize how we drive cultures of risk and/or prevention in our own communities. Within our spheres of influence, we can begin to foster a healthier dialogue about substances with our children.
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Opportunities to Influence
An FCD Prevention Specialist once asked a group of fourth graders, "When do adults drink?"
"When they take their coats off," a child replied. Unsure what he meant, the Prevention Specialist asked him to explain.
"Whenever anyone comes to our house, my father says, 'May I take your coat and would you like a drink?'"
The father in this situation may not have realized the message his son internalized - that alcohol begins the social interaction of every adult who enters his home.
At FCD, alcohol and other drug use is squarely a health issue. We are careful to remind students that many adults can, and some choose to, drink alcohol in moderate and responsible ways. But we wonder why the one-third of adults who don't drink are so invisible. Why aren't kids getting hearty exposure to a message that says if you choose not to drink, this is normal and rewarding as a teen certainly, but also can be in adult life?
Other examples of how parents, school faculty, and other adults may inadvertently encourage teen alcohol and other drug use include:
- denying substance use problems exist when they do
- waiting to address substance abuse concerns until serious consequences have occurred
- only addressing use as a disciplinary issue, not ever as a health issue
- covering up incidents of use to protect a school's or student's reputation
- avoiding locations where smoking, drinking, and other drug use is known to occur
- hearing about off-campus parties and under-age drinking and not addressing it
- failing to create and/or uphold clear school policies and procedures or family expectations about student non-use
- enforcing rules and applying penalties inconsistently (i.e., favorable treatment of children of trustees, benefactors, alumni and/or faculty)
- serving alcohol at school events that students and underage alumni attend
- allowing students to possess alcohol- or other-drug-related promotional items (clothing, posters, etc.).
That is not to say that schools should ban alcohol from all adult events, or that adults are not ever able to engage in the responsible use of alcohol in front of children. Yet, in the spirit of prevention and what is healthiest for youth, it's crucial that both schools and parents critically reflect on their current practices.
Do your beliefs, attitudes, values, and practices involving alcohol and other drugs take away from or add value to the health of the community and home?
How can you become a healthy hero for your children, students, and community?
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Health to Highlight
How you feel about teen use is one matter. How readily and openly you celebrate, reward, and normalize non-use is another. Effective prevention necessarily involves identifying and encouraging young people who choose not to use alcohol or other drugs.
Many kids - and often the majority in schools around the globe - choose not to use. We as adults, however, might not be focused on these kids or this particular healthy choice. We may or may not know who these young people are, as some may be insecure about their decision. Students who choose not to use often don't realize that the majority of their peers have made the same decision. They can often feel isolated and/or marginalized, especially if they have never been told that their choice is valued, respected, and normal by the important adults from whom they seek approval and validation.
At FCD we realize that the minority of students who are engaging in substance use over the weekend are often a hot topic come Monday morning. The party "everyone" attended and where many kids "got busted" is a gossip-worthy conversation, and can lead to false perceptions about student use. However, with guidance from adults, they can also be opportunities to critically evaluate events in real time:
- Was "everyone" really at the party, and was "everyone" there drinking alcohol?
- Why did this news travel so quickly through the community?
- What other healthy activities occurred that same weekend among the student body?
- Why aren't those "healthy highs" talked about more on Monday morning?
Through such dialo
gues, we as adults can highlight the majority of students who consistently and happily make healthy decisions. We can reinforce with our children - and with one another - the many reasons why students choose not to use:
- peer group attitudes
- prioritizing academics
- commitment to athletics
- parental expectations
- effective substance use education
- prior troubles (legal, social) with substance use
- family history of substance abuse, including tragedy and/or family disintegration.
At FCD Prevention Works, shifting perceptions about teen substance use from untrue and exaggerated to accurate and healthy is a driving force of our mission. This is why adult support for
the social norms approach to prevention
is crucial to us.
Data collected by the FCD Student Attitudes and Behavior Survey
demonstrates that the majority of teenagers make healthy decisions about alcohol or other drugs. This being the case, why aren't some teens getting the message?
This gap in perception of current, actual teen use versus perceived use is a major risk factor for later use. The more use teens erroneously think there is among their peers, the more use they will likely engage in based on such false perceptions.
Our job as adults is to debunk false normative beliefs about teen use, first among ourselves, then among our students and children. Most kids don't use. How can we illuminate and celebrate this reality throughout their growing years?
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Being the Hero
As they navigate their adolescent years, students will continue to confront the topic of alcohol and other drugs. How they choose to define their own relationship with substances will be based largely on how they think the people who matter to them - you included - regard the subject.
Unfortunately, it is not entirely possible for adults to shield our youth from risky cultural messaging about alcohol and other drugs. However, adults in students' day-to-day lives can play an impactful role on student perceptions of use. They can guide their students to healthy options, protective factors, and non-use opportunities whenever possible. They can encourage students' critical thinking and meaningful reflection about what's healthy and normal for kids.
Adults create a culture of prevention by modeling healthy behavior and attitudes. We urge you to define your beliefs, hold to your values, and challenge risky adolescent misperceptions.
Adult attitudes about teen alcohol and other drug use and non-use matter, as do the voices and guidance of teachers and parents. You help influence the perception and behavior of the students and teens around you!
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About the Authors
Deirdre Flynn, who joined FCD in 2012, is a Senior Prevention Specialist and Supervising Field Officer for the organization. She holds a BA in History from Rutgers University and a provisional teaching certificate in the state of New Jersey, where she worked as a substitute teacher in grades K-12 and coached youth sports. Her family moved to Switzerland in 2007 where she was very active in her children's international school's parents association and learned to speak German. She and her family moved to the Chicago area in 2015 where she teaches aerobics and serves on the board of her local community's coalition to prevent adolescent alcohol and other drug use.
A Chicago resident,
Katie Greeley joined FCD as a Prevention Specialist in 2016. She holds a Master's degree in Social Work from The University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.
Katie Greeley is a Licensed Social Worker and
Certified Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Counselor
. In addition to her work at FCD, Katie currently works for Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital in the Division of Adolescent Medicine, assisting in the development of the new Substance Use Treatment and Prevention Program, opening the Fall of 2018.
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