Adolescents and alcohol
A father has forbidden his 16-year old daughter to drink alcohol at least 50 times. Is this 50 times too much?
Adolescents start drinking alcohol at an increasingly older age. But when they start, they drink a lot. The outcome from a joint study with the Trimbos Institute shows that parents play a very important role in their children’s alcohol use. By setting strict rules, parents can postpone the onset of drinking and reduce the amount they drink. Thus, even prohibiting drinking as often as 50 times is not enough to convince your child not to drink alcohol. We also looked whether we should target parents, adolescents, or parents and adolescents together with regard to alcohol prevention. We studied over 3000 adolescents (aged 12-18) and their parents for a period of four years. The outcome was that setting strict rules and thus postponing and reducing the use of alcohol amongst youngsters in combination with increasing the adolescents’ self-control, is only effective when both parents and adolescents are targeted in the intervention programme.