Alcohol in the Home with Teenagers
If you have teens, keep your alcohol locked away
If you have a teenager at home, especially one who is dealing with a substance abuse problem, keeping alcohol in your house is a very risky proposition.
If your teen has been to rehab and is in recovery, the best thing you can do is keep alcohol out of your house completely in order to remove temptation. Teenagers who are in recovery may find it hard to resist open bottles of alcohol in their own home.
Teenagers, in general, like to experiment with alcohol, especially when they know they can sneak a few drinks here and there from their parents’ liquor supply without anybody noticing. If you have teenagers in your home, there are a few precautions you should take when keeping alcohol in your home:
Keep liquor in locked cupboards. This will decrease the chance of your teenagers finding and consuming any alcohol in your home.
Only buy alcohol as needed. If you typically just buy wine or beer for special occasions, don’t keep stockpiles in your house, which can easily be accessed by your teens.
If you like to enjoy a glass of wine after work each night, make sure you limit it to a glass each night. If you are frequently indulging in two or more glasses of wine every night, you may be modeling for your teenager that drinking in excess is okay.
Set consequences with your teenagers so that they know what kind of trouble they will get into if they do raid the liquor cabinet.
Monitor the alcohol in your home, and keep track of how much is there. If your teenagers know you never look at the bottles you have, they are more likely to take some.
Don’t serve alcohol to your teenagers or their friends, and don’t try to be their buddy by offering them a drink when you have one. Not only is serving alcohol to a minor illegal, but it can give the message that drinking is okay, whether you are with them or not.
Tags: teen alcohol, teen alcohol rehab, Teen Rehab