PARENTS HAVE never been more indifferent about teenage drinking despite clear evidence that such alcohol abuse can affect a young person’s brain development, a seminar has been told.
Dr Bobby Smyth, a child and adolescent psychiatrist who treats addiction, said yesterday that adolescence was an important phase. It was a time when the brain was developing and changing and during which teenagers were learning social skills for life.
Dr Smyth said we did not know of any safe level of drinking at that age, “so the cautious thing to do in that instance is to delay drinking for as long as possible. I think it’s up to parents to decide when that is.
“As a society we’d be better off just pushing back up the age at which teenagers start drinking.”
In the 1960s about 14 per cent of young people were drinking by age 15, but by the 1990s about half of young people were taking alcohol by that age, he said. It mattered, not just to their health, but also because those who were drinking earlier were also more likely to use drugs such as cocaine later.
“I think it’s never been clearer that we should be more concerned, yet parents I don’t think have ever been more indifferent about teenage drinking than now,” said Dr Smyth. “There’s many parents out there who either turn a blind eye to it or actively approve of their teenagers drinking at the age of 15 and 16.”
He added that teenage years were when girls learn how to meet boys and vice versa. if that was done through a haze of alcohol from the age of 15 or 16, then they would not develop any other way of socialising in their 20s and 30s.
“I want teenagers to go out and about and socialise and have fun and meet their friends and form relationships and friendships, but I’d like them to learn how to do that without the crutch of alcohol first of all, and if they then in young adulthood want to throw alcohol into the equation to spice things up another little bit, so be it,” said Dr Smyth.
He said parents should not give up nudging their youngsters in the right direction and they should not lose hope, even when they think they have lost the battle, as teenagers of such parents often indicate in individual counselling sessions how much they value their parents’ interest and influence on how they are doing.
Dr Smyth was speaking at a seminar organised by the National Advisory Committee on Drugs.