Ep 181: Rethinking What It Means to Teach Our Kids About Alcohol

Christie came across a reel from a health coach with an unpopular opinion: she's not going to teach her teens to drink responsibly — she's going to give them the real truth about what alcohol actually is and does. The comments were - well, interesting.

In this episode Christie adds her voice to that conversation, shares what she's seen firsthand as a mom with a son in college right now, and talks about why the cultural pressure to be the 'cool parent' around alcohol might be doing more harm than we think. If you want the deeper dive on what to actually say to your teens, go back and listen to episode 139 — this one picks up where that left off. 

Topics covered:  The "teach them to drink at home" argument — and why the research doesn't support it | Christie's real story of drinking as a teenager | The neuroscience of the adolescent brain and alcohol | What to actually say to your kids at every stage | For the parent who just found out their kid is drinking | Why this conversation matters for us too — not just our children 

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Transcript

 Welcome to the Catholic Sobriety Podcast, the go-to resource for women seeking to have a deeper understanding of the role alcohol plays in their lives, women who are looking to drink less or not at all for any reason. I am your host, Kristy Walker. I'm a wife, mom, and a joy-filled Catholic, and I am the Catholic sobriety coach, and I am so glad you're here So I was scrolling Instagram recently, as I do, and I came across a reel from a health coach. The text on the screen said something like, uh, unpopular opinion, and then she said that she's not going to teach her kids to drink responsibly. So now, before you get upset, let me tell you what she actually means by that, because it might not be what you think. She's not saying that she's going to completely ignore the topic or let them just kind of figure it out on their own. What she's saying is she's not going to be the parent who lets her underage teens drink at home Instead, she and her husband are going to give them real information about what alcohol actually is, what it does to the developing brain and body, and why it affects some people very differently than others. And the comments, wow. Wow. A lot of people were not happy. They were really, really saying some pretty mean things. Some of the more mild ones just said that her teens aren't going to be able to handle themselves at a party. They'll be the ones passed out, um, because they were not-- never taught how to drink properly, , and that she's just setting them up to fail. And I sat there reading those comments and much more unkind comments here's what I keep coming back to. The fact that telling the truth about alcohol feels radical, that right there is the whole problem, and that's what we're talking about today. So I wanna spend a minute on the reaction itself because I think it tells us something really important. When a mom says, "I'm going to give my kids real information about what alcohol does," and that triggers thousands of angry comments, what does that actually mean? It means we've normalized something so completely that the truth about it feels like an attack. I mean, think about it. We don't see this reaction when someone says, "I'm going to teach my kids what cigarettes do to the lungs." And we don't see it when someone says, "I'm going to be honest with my kids about what drugs do to the brain." Nobody calls that naive or says that your kids are gonna be unprepared for life. But alcohol, alcohol is different because alcohol is woven so deeply into how we socialize, how we celebrate, how we relax, and how we parent. That questioning, it feels like... No That questioning it feels like questioning something fundamental. And when people get that defensive about information, it's worth asking why. So I'll tell you what I think. I think a lot of people in those comments are parents who drink, who have built their social lives around drinking, and who genu- and who genuinely want their kids to have fun in college the way that they had fun in college. And consciously or not, when someone says that alcohol is actually dangerous, and here's the data, they hear, "You are doing something wrong," and that makes them uncomfortable, so they push back. That's not judgment. That's just what defensiveness usually is. It's discomfort in disguise. But here's what really gets me, like really gets me. I've heard parents say, and I promise you I am not making this up, "I just want my teen to have a great college experience. I want them to have fun." As if drinking is what makes college real, as if the young adult who doesn't want to drink or party is going to be sitting alone in their dorm room missing out on life. Sometimes the teen doesn't even wanna drink. They're perfectly fine. They have no interest. And the parent is the one who can't imagine college without it because they're romanticizing their own experience. They're remembering the fun parts. They're not remembering the shame or maybe the stupid things they said or did, the dangerous situations they may have put themselves in, or how they felt the morning after. Believe me, I know it's easy to do. I can romanticize some of my own drinking experiences too. I can romanticize some of my own drinking experiences too. It wasn't all terrible, but it was eventually. And the parts I don't remember because I blacked out, I can't romanticize those at all And here's what I want every parent who is romanticizing the college drinking experience to hear. I have a son who went to college out of state last fall for the first time, and in just the first few weeks of his semester, families received multiple safety alerts from his campus, multiple, about assaults, sexual assaults, about young people being hurt, and every single one involved alcohol that I saw, every single one. And all of them also involve someone the victim knew, not a stranger, someone that they'd met at a party or someone in their building, someone who seemed fine. So when a parent says, "I want my teen to learn to drink responsibly so they'll be prepared for college," I just wanna ask them, prepared for what exactly? Because the college drinking that actually exists is not a glass of wine at a dinner table. It's solo cups and keg stands and people throwing up because their bodies are desperately trying to rid themselves of a poison. It's blackouts. It's making decisions you cannot remember making. It's being around people that you barely know with your judgment completely shut off. There is no responsible version of that, and teaching your teen to drink at home does not help prepare them for it. It just gives them a head start on the habit, and that's worth talking about Now, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you might remember that I did an episode last fall, it was episode 139, about the conversation that my husband and I had with our sons before they headed off to college. We sat all three of our boys down, including our 12-year-old, although we did have him go upstairs for part of it because it wasn't We sat all three boys down and we talked honestly about alcohol, neuroscience, identity. We sat all-- We actually sat all three of our boys down and we talked honestly about alcohol, neuroscience, identity, peer pressure, safety, all of it. And I wanna be clear, that conversation is not the same as teaching your ch- your kids to drink responsibly And I just wanna be really clear about this. That conversation is not the same thing as teaching your kids to drink responsibly. Those are two completely different things. Teaching your kids about alcohol, what it does to the brain, why it affects some people differently than others, what the risks actually are, how to handle pressure, that's just good parenting. Trying to teach, trying to teach your kids to drink responsibly by letting them drink at home with you so that they can learn how, well Trying to teach your kids to drink responsibly by letting them drink at home with you so that they learn how, well, that's a completely different thing, and research does not support it at all. So today, I want to go a layer deeper because this reel didn't just make me nod along. It made me want to add my voice to the conversation Because I'm not just a sobriety coach who has to read the research. I am someone who experienced it. Now, I wanna tell you how I drank in high school. Almost all of my drinking happened at friends' houses, not at bonfires in a field somewhere, not at some unsupervised party in the middle of nowhere. Well, sometimes it did, but most of them were at houses. Sometimes the parents were home and just looked the other way. Sometimes they weren't home, and we just had access. Sometimes parents actually bought us wine coolers. I mean, not a lot, just enough to seem cool, but then we'd raid the rest of the stash anyway. We also used to spot beer. Have you heard of it? Have you done it? It's when you go to a store and you look for somebody who's older and looks like maybe they won't turn you in, and offer them some extra money to buy alcohol for you. It works. Well, it worked for us 100% of the time. And here's the thing about let them drink at home so they're safe. And here's the thing about the let them drink at home so they're safe argument. I was the kid drinking at home. Okay, not my home, but at a friend's home, and it did not keep me safe. It kept me drunk. The very first time I drank, and I've said this before and I'll keep saying it, something in me responded to alcohol differently than a normal relationship with it would allow. I was at that party sophomore year, and I loved it immediately. Not just liked it, I loved it. Like something had been unlocked. Was I drinking more than my friends? Honestly, I have no idea. I was too drunk to track what everyone else was doing. I thought we were all drinking the same amount. Maybe we were, maybe we weren't. But I know that for me, the way it felt, the way it hit, it wasn't just fun. It was relief. It was belonging. It was actually the thing I'd been looking for since freshman year, and I was really having trouble finding my footing anywhere. And no amount of supervised wine coolers at someone else's house was going to change the way my brain responded to that feeling. Because here's the truth that the teach them to drink responsibly crowd doesn't want you to hear. You cannot teach responsible drinking to a brain that is wired to respond to alcohol the way mine was, and you don't know whose brain that is until it's too late So let me give you some numbers. The research is clear that children whose parents provide them alcohol at home are not safer drinkers. They are actually more likely to engage in risky drinking outside the home. Europe, which is often held up as the model of responsible early drinking, has the highest rates of risky adolescent drinking in the world. The supervised drinking at home hypothesis has been studied, and it just does not hold up. Here's why. And here's why. The adolescent brain, and this includes college students all the way up to age twenty-five, which is, you know, well beyond the legal drinking age, is still developing. Their brains are still developing all the way up to age twenty-five. The prefrontal co-cortex, which manages... The prefrontal cortex, which manages judgment, impulse control, and decision-making, is literally not finished yet. And alcohol directly suppresses that part of your brain. It turns off your off switch. So you're not just teaching a developing brain to handle alcohol responsibly. You're repeatedly suppressing the very part of the brain that would learn from that experience And then there's the addiction risk. Research shows that drinking before age 15 increases the risk of developing alcohol use disorder fivefold compared to waiting until 21. Fivefold. The earlier the exposure, the deeper the wiring. The brain learns what it learns when it learns it, and what it learns about alcohol at 16 can follow someone for decades. I know this not just from research. I know this from my own brain. I was addicted the very first time I got drunk. I didn't know what it was at 16, but looking back, that's exactly what it was. But I wanna be fair here because the comment section wasn't only angry. There were thousands of people, moms, dads, people in recovery, young adults saying, "Thank you," saying, "Finally," saying, "I was taught to drink responsibly, and here I am 20 years later working on my relationship with alcohol." That second group, they are my people, and I suspect a lot of them are listening to this podcast right now. But I do want to acknowledge the other side with some grace because I think a lot of those parents are genuinely scared. They are not trying to harm their kids. They're looking at college culture, the binge drinking, the peer pressures, the stories that end in tragedy, the stories that end in tragedy, and they're trying to do something, anything to keep their kids safer than they would be otherwise. And I understand that fear. I have college-age sons right now. I understand it deeply. But but fear-based parenting that bypasses truth is still not the answer. The truth is providing alcohol to minors does not protect them. The data says so. My own story says so. the Answer is information, real information. The kind that respects your teen enough to tell them what alcohol actually is and what it does to their brain and body. Not a lecture, not a scare tactic, the truth. Because their brain might respond to alcohol the way mine did, immediately, intensely, In a way that makes stopping harder than starting, and they deserve to know that before they find out the hard way. so what does that conversation actually look like? I covered this in depth in my episode last fall, so I'm not going to repeat the whole thing, but go back and listen to episode one thirty-nine if you haven't. But I want to add a few things that I've been thinking about since then. The first is to tell them the truth about your own story, whatever it is. If you've had a complicated relationship with alcohol, your teens need to know that. Maybe not every detail, but the truth that alcohol has affected you in ways you didn't expect, that the just one drink thing didn't always work out the way you planned, and that you're still figuring this out. Humility is not weakness in this conversation. It's the thing that makes them actually listen. Also, tell them not everyone is drinking, and the ones who aren't, they're often the leaders. Gen Z is actually the most sober generation in decades. A significant portion of college students drink far less than their peers assume or don't drink at all. Your son or daughter is not going to be the only one, I promise. And the ones who are comfortable in their own skin without a drink in their hand, well, people are drawn to them. I told my sons, "You never know who you'll inspire just by being authentically you." And then tell them about the risks. Some brains respond to alcohol the way mine did, immediately, intensely, and in a way that makes stopping so hard that it would have been better that I had never started at all It would have In a way that m- Some brains respond to alcohol the way mine did, immediately, intensely, in a way that made... No. Some brains respond to alcohol the way mine did, immediately, intensely, and it was way harder to stop, so much so that it would have been better had I not even started in the first place. You don't know if your teen is one of those people, and neither do they, and the way to find out is usually after the fact. Give them that information before they walk into a party. Let them be the one asking the questions before alcohol answers it for them. Because some people can be shackled with addiction for life, a life that started out as just fun and parties and a little drinking on the weekends. They deserve to know that before they find out the hard way and remind them of their identity in Christ. Not the identity they perform when they're drinking, not the version of themselves that's looser, funnier, more confident after two drinks. Their actual identity. Beloved, known, equipped. Two, 2 Timothy 1:7 says, "God gave us not a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and self-control." That power already lives in them. Alcohol doesn't give them access to do something that they're missing. It borrows from something they already have Now I wanna pause here for the parent who's listening to this and realizing that their teen or young adult has already been drinking. Maybe you just found out, or maybe you've suspected for a while. First, take a breath. It's gonna be okay. What I needed to hear at 16 wasn't shame, it wasn't anger, it wasn't my parents telling me I was a disappointment. What I needed to hear was, "You don't have to keep going down this road just because you started. Every day is a new choice. What you did last weekend does not define who you are today. And if you need help stopping, help exists. You don't have to do this alone." That's what your son or daughter needs from you, too. Your love doesn't change, their past doesn't define their future, and the conversation you're afraid to have, it might be the most important one you ever have with them. Don't let the fear of what you might find out keep you from saying something So here's what I wanna leave you with, because this episode isn't just about teenagers. The same culture that says, "Teach your kids to drink responsibly," is the same culture that told you wine is self-care, that mommy needs her wine, that you deserve a glass after a hard day, that alcohol is just how adults relax and celebrate and cope and connect. That's not true for teenagers, and it's not true for you either. The women I coach, the ones listening to this podcast, they didn't set out to have a complicated relationship with alcohol. They were told over and over that this is just what adults do, that this was normal, that it was fine. And then somewhere along the way, for a lot of them, it wasn't fine anymore. They couldn't quite figure out how to get back , because the culture around them kept insisting there was nothing to get back from. You're not naive for questioning that narrative. You're not uptight for wanting something different, and you are not ruining anyone's fun by telling the truth. The truth is alcohol is a drug. It affects some brains more than others. It's not a rite of passage. It's not a coping mechanism. It's not what makes something a celebration. The people, the kids... The people and the kids in your life deserve to know that, and so does the woman listening to this right now The reaction to that reel, all those angry comments about naive moms and unprepared kids, that reaction is data. It's simply telling us how deeply we have absorbed the message that alcohol is just part of life. That questioning it is strange, that the truth about it is somehow an overreaction. It's not an overreaction. It's the truth. It's science. And you're allowed to tell it to your kids and to yourself. If this episode resonated with you, share it with another parent. Forward it to the mom in your life who is just trying to figure out what to say to her college freshman. Send it to the woman who needed to hear that she's not alone in questioning this. And if you're someone who has been doing this work yourself, who has been examining your own relationship with alcohol this summer, I want you to hear this too. The clarity you're building in your own life, your kids are watching that. Your choices are speaking even when your words aren't. Next week, I'm sharing something personal, a moment that happened to me that... Next week, I'm sharing something personal, a moment that happened to me that has nothing to do with alcohol on the surface, but has everything to do with what my clients go through in the messy middle of this work. It involves a closet, a lot of tears, and a lie I didn't know I was carrying. I think it's going to resonate. I'll talk to you again soon Well, that does it for this episode of the Catholic Sobriety Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I would invite you to share it with a friend who might also get value from it as well. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a thing. I am the Catholic sobriety coach, and if you would like to learn how to work with me or learn more about the coaching that I offer, visit my website, thecatholicsobrietycoach.com. Follow me on Instagram @thecatholicsobrietycoach. I look forward to speaking to you next time. And remember, I am here for you. I am praying for you. You are not alone.