Parents and Prevention - What We Know
Parents and families make all the difference when it comes to keeping kids healthy. Research shows that many young people do not drink alcohol or use other drugs because in order to live up to their parents’ expectations.
Additionally, research conducted by the Partnership to End Addiction contends that when children are taught the risks of early substance use by their parents, these young people are up to fifty percent less likely to experience problems with addiction later in life.
Within the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, research into the lives of young people is also ongoing. The organization’s prevention arm, Prevention Solutions, administers the Student Attitudes and Behavior Survey in dozens of domestic and international school communities among students each academic year. From this survey, the organization can now draw upon the report of over 140,000 students in grades 6-12, surveyed in over 186 schools and in 31 states and 39 countries across the 2009-2022 academic years.
Students taking the survey are asked about the role of parental monitoring, supervision and support in their daily lives. Survey results show that parents have much more influence on their children's decision to use or not use than they may think. When students are asked, "Whose opinion matters the most to you when you make decisions about alcohol and other drug use?" the majority of our students declare their parents' opinions more important than those of teachers, coaches, older students and peers. In some school communities, kids report that what their parents’ opinions about alcohol and other drug use matters even more to them than their own opinions, especially during the middle school years and transition to high school.
What we know about parents' and families' influence on keeping kids healthy is clear – young people need their parents and other immediate caregivers as their prevention partners. So what might be getting in the way of engaging in substance abuse prevention efforts with your kids, and how can that change?
A Parent's Worry: Does Everyone Really Do It?
The reality is that most young people in the United States and across the world do not drink alcohol at high volumes. Many have never used alcohol at all, and most don’t use other drugs during this stage in their lives. Does that seem hard to believe? If so, you’re not alone, and you can also be reassured by the data. The social norms approach to prevention is a data-driven approach to prevention based on the fact that young people and even the adults in their lives tend to consistently and dramatically overestimate alcohol and other drug use by teens. At the same time, we are all prone to underestimate healthy behaviors, such as the non-use of substances by adolescents. The trouble is, when parents and their kids believe there is a high level of use within teenage peer groups, this alone may encourage healthy kids to begin to drink alcohol or use other drugs. By contrast, use is less prevalent in communities where parents and other adults in teens’ lives uphold non-use as the norm, and young people are recognized and respected for their healthy choices.
Engaging Families in Effective Substance Abuse Prevention
In order to begin to change substance use norms in a culture where teens may think "everyone is doing it," it is important to question where unhealthy beliefs come from in the first place. Many times your kids may hear stories about a small group of their peers who have made unhealthy choices with regard to substance use. When kids repeatedly hear such stories, teenage use begins to seem like a normal occurrence in their community, and the related consequences of use might start to become normalized. As more people talk, stories grow and become exaggerated. When this happens, pretty soon the majority of teens in a community, who make consistently healthy choices about alcohol and other drugs, start to feel abnormal for abstaining from use, and inside of them, an internal pressure to fit into what they think is the norm begins to mount.
Families, and especially parents, can intervene to correct false, unhealthy perceptions of use and to point out the healthy behaviors of so many youth where they live. Families that understand the social norms approach will be able to question and challenge - in a supportive manner - their child's generalizations and overestimations of their peers' higher-risk behavior. A first step in engaging families in social norms-based prevention is to ensure that parents are not fueling false and unhealthy normative beliefs! How many times have we heard an adult say, "All kids are going to experiment with alcohol"?
The truth is that most students don't use regularly and don't think it's cool to get drunk. In fact, over 30% of students surveyed internationally and nearly 40% of students in the United States hold the personal opinion that drinking is never a good thing for teenagers to do. Quite often, our young people who make healthy decisions become an unsupported majority, choosing healthy behaviors even as the adults in their lives expect less of them. The family role in preventing student use starts when parents, older siblings and the extended family all help young people feel confident, proud and celebrated for making healthy choices.
Families and Free Time: It's Just a Movie
Teens' perceptions about what is normal and acceptable behavior are derived from a few primary sources: parents, peers and media. Increasingly, families are challenged to win the attention of young people from formidable adversaries like smart phones, tablets and social media platforms.
Technology provides students fingertip access to music, movies, television and other media. Technology is beneficial when it connects kids to relatives living in another state, as a hub for research and learning, and often as a place for healthy recreation, too. However, in the midst of all the apps, a variety of media content can normalize teen alcohol and other drug use, minimize the associated risks, and glorify attitudes about using substances.
The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that, even before the advent of tablet technology, for every hour of music teenagers listened to, they were exposed to 35 references to alcohol and other drug use. In general, exposure to potentially "pro" substance abuse messages from our society far outweighs the amount of discussion families are having about prevention. This is why it's so important for families to have lively conversations about media with their children. Technology isn't going anywhere, but we can help families deconstruct the media influences in their children's lives. Children should understand that movies, music and television are not a true depiction of an often much healthier reality.