Alcohol + Teens = Anxiety

Emmaus Patch recently posed a rather vexing MomsTalk question: 

This Dad's first impulsive reaction was that no parent would ever think of doing that in this day and age.

News of adults running afoul of law enforcement in recent years by supplying alcohol to teens at parties immediately came to mind. No adult in their right mind would want that type of trouble--or to be legally responsible for teenagers getting behind the wheel after drinking alcohol.

My second reaction was how hypocritical my first thought was.

I clearly recollect turning a blind eye as both of my daughters--and their friends--indulged in alcohol at their mother's home during a "college going-away party" three summers ago.

Granted, it wasn't my residence and probably not (although I'm not certain) my legal responsibility if someone drove home plastered. But morally, and as a father, I should have put a stop to it. 

I likely would've been told by their mother to mind my own business and leave, since it wasn't my house or my party. Therefore, I didn't take the parental responsibility that I should have.

Thank goodness nothing terrible happened. It was a horrible, irresponsible chance to take.  

That shindig took place after both daughters wound up in hospital emergency rooms at different points during their high school years after experimenting with alcohol.

Apparently, their taste for flavored vodka overwhelmed any common sense they were taught by their father.

Yet, as a young child, I was introduced to alcohol at a very early age. I think there were photos of me and every one of my first cousins sipping beer from Grandpa's glass.

We were "treated" to a small amount of Grandpa's wine mixed in our Coca-Cola during Sunday dinners at about age 10. That "graduated" to a glass of red wine--again only at Sunday dinner--at around age 14 or 15. It was considered a rite of passage.

My father has never been a huge drinker--he now gets teased for diluting his scotch with both water and ice--but he allowed me a beer with Saturday or Sunday dinner when I was 17. His thinking was that it was better to expose me to beer at home.

I was exposed to alcohol at home and still went on to do what many teens who went away to college did--binge drink and party to excess.

So, I feel like a hypocrite for scolding my own children. I think the old saying is "do as I say, not as I do."  

My college-aged daughter scoffed at me when I warned her about the perils of drinking on and off campus. "What else do you think we do on weekends?" is the stock response. She pays her own way for school, so cutting off monetary assistance isn't an option.

Again, Dad feels like a hypocrite in this case even though the drinking age was 18 when I was in college. It now stands at 21, yet my 20-year-old brags about batting her eyelashes at nightclub security and waltzing into the bar.

And I can't do a thing about it. Except pray nothing terrible happens. It's out of my hands now. It seems it was always out of my hands. 

The original MomsTalk question is whether or not you serve children alcohol at home.

Mine are adults now, but if and when any grandchildren come on the scene, the answer will be an emphatic "no."

Tom De Martini is editor of Upper Macungie Patch.