Thanksgiving break is coming up and you’ve decided to have the party at your house. If your teen is going to drink, you want them safe in your house. Good plan?

No. The plan sucks! Supporting your teen in underage drinking is not the way to ensure they are safe on what promises to be an evening with let’s say a lot of behavior you might question, or should question. Instead, you need to set the rules and be the parent.

Your teen likes to get away with stuff.  It teaches them about boundaries and the society’s limits, but they like it more when you hold them accountable and stop them in their tracks from making poor decisions. Imagine if something really bad was to happen. In addition to your own guilt, someone and this may include your teen will wonder “I‘m a teen, who was in charge of me? I’m not really old enough to make these decisions.”  When teens get in trouble that is when they realize they weren’t old enough to be responsible for that decision.  Before hand, it’s all bravado!  If they can’t say, “What are my parents going to think or do to me?” after having done something that wrong.  Something is wrong.

It’s never really okay to approve of illicit behavior in an attempt to make the bad behavior safer.  You simply need to teach that the behavior is not acceptable, know your teen might attempt the behavior anyway and hope they don’t make a decision where the consequence is worse than they thought. 

This is how teens learn adult behavior and begin making adult choices. Your job is to make this safer and not the illicit behavior.

Related posts:

1. Whose House?