Young and Drunk

It's up to us.

As I rushed into the building where my girls' preschool class was, I caught the front page headlines of our local newspaper: "Young and Drunk: Edmonton police reveal 1/3 of young people between 15 and 29 binge drink." The tragic part was, I wasn't shocked at all. In fact, my first thought was, "What took them so long to realize that?"

I was a kid within those statistics. In fact, I started drinking when I was twelve. In my case it wasn't a matter of getting into the wrong crowd or giving into peer pressure. My mother was an alcoholic and made it easy for me to sneak alcohol. There were even times when she asked me to drink with her! I was, what psychologists call today, "a high-risk kid."

High-risk kids are those whose homelife or even the area they live in catapults them into the category of most likely to fall into a life of drugs, alcohol or more life-threatening activities. My question for the Edmonton police is: What do you suggest we do about that 15-29 year old group and bring down that alarming statistic? I have a few suggestions:

(1) Teach: We know teenagers will rebel in some ways. We also know that in order to believe what we teach them, kids have to figure things out for themselves sometimes. And we have to let them even if it's a hard lesson. But we should never give up teaching. By teaching I don't mean lecture. I mean giving information, facts, real-life stories these kids can relate to. If you lecture, they'll tune you out. If you teach at their level they're more likely to absorb your words.

(2) Listen: My grandfather used to say, "Listening is closing your mouth and opening your ears." That means hear what these kids are telling us. It's so difficult to be a teenager and even more difficult to be an individual who doesn't give in to peer pressure. Listen to what kids tell you. Encourage them to talk to you. Despite the stereotype kids, tweens and teens aren't "brain dead." All they want is to be heard, respected and treated as the intelligent young people they are. It's no different than adults.