Alcohol consumption and especially teen drinking has become a major problem in our society today. There are many reasons for that, but one is our kids get so many messages that drinking alcohol is fun and cool. That is what they are seeing. As parents, we need to be proactive on the other side of it. First, my wife and I have chosen not to drink alcohol and not because we think it’s wrong as adults. We’ve chosen not to because we don’t want to give our kids the idea that we can do it as adults, while they need to wait. They see us not drinking and hopefully, that will rub off on them. Second, we also have a lot of conversations with them about the dangers of alcohol, especially young people drinking alcohol. In those ways, we’ve tried to be proactive.
Now the question becomes what if you do all of that and you find your kids still participate in underage drinking? Fortunately, we haven’t had to hit that yet with any of our kids, but if it were to occur this is what Lauren and I would do.
We would try to be calm about the situation and give them some distinct consequences. I would tell them, “Look we’ve talked about this and you have chosen to disregard our wishes, here are the consequences you are going to have. But believe me, these are nothing compared to the long-term consequences you could have and what the Lord could bring you.”
I think that is the way we would handle it. We would try to paint the picture that, as parents, we are going to give punishments and consequences for that type of behavior, but that it’s nothing compared to the consequences you could experience down the road.
