Modeling responsible drinking, or contributing to the delinquency of a minor?

Hi Mark

Finding your website and going through your program has brought a great sense of relief to me and my husband. I have just finished Session 4 and have already implemented several strategies. Our just turned 16 year old son S___ has been an "intense" kid pretty much all his life. We love him dearly however he has been very stressful to raise with many angry outbursts. He has a 12 year old brother who is a lot calmer and easier.

Our current issue with him is that he has recently become friends with a new group of teenagers in the year above him at school. The legal drinking age in New Zealand is 18, and these 16-17 year olds have regular parties with lots of alcohol. So far he has been to one where he drank one beer, then said no when offered more. I believe him as when he came home he didn't appear to be at all drunk, also he has always thought for himself and seems a little less subject to peer pressure than others his age. Now he has been invited to another party where we don't know the teenagers or their parents. It concerns me that we have no phone numbers for any of these people. When he was younger it was easy to meet his friends' parents, now he doesn't want us to be involved at all and is being quite verbally aggressive about wanting to go and telling us it's nothing to do with us. I am planning to implement the 'Art of Saying Yes' with the condition that he brings a close friend of his with him and brings non-alcoholic drinks. We have agreed to a rule that one beer is okay (previously he has never drunk alcohol).

Do you have any ideas for us with this issue?

M.

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Hi M.,

Re: We have agreed to a rule that one beer is okay (previously he has never drunk alcohol). Do you have any ideas for us with this issue?

Well, one can make a good argument on either side of the fence:

1. Good idea. You will be modeling responsible drinking...

...or

2. Bad idea. You will contributing to the delinquency of a minor...

Weighing-in the fact that the legal drinking age in New Zealand is 18, I would say that this issue falls into a gray area (i.e., there is not just one right way to handle this).

I think this should be your call -- you decide which way you want to go, then do an assessment after the fact to see if it was a good decision. (However, if alcoholism runs in the family, I would say to strongly discourage drinking -- and educate your son regarding the special risks that exist for him having a genetic predisposition to alcoholism.)

Mark Hutten, M.A.

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Your program has been an absolute life-saver for our family...

Hi Mark

When I called the cops on my daughter due to a similar situation a year earlier (she was 14yrs old), the Police took her aside in a separate room and she told them a big story about how her behaviour was not her fault and that I was a bad mother and so the Police advised her to go to live with her father. They did not bother to find out from me what the truth was about her behaviour, and also that her father had bashed her (and our son) in a drunken/drugged rage. In short, the Police here would not help me and instead guided our daughter into a dangerous situation (and she then witnessed her stepmother and step-brother being bashed by her father. - They then left and had him charged but our daughter was then left alone to live with her father who threatened to kill her if she left him.)

BUT THE GOOD NEWS IS is that I did continue diligently with your program, and every time that I was in danger of being hit by our son due to setting limits or issuing a consequence for our son’s misbehaviour, I would quickly leave the house and go for a walk or drive for 30 to 60 minutes to give him time to calm down (even if it was cold and raining in the middle of winter). I had to persevere with this for a few months and now things have improved DRAMATICALLY. Our son knows that I will follow through with consequences (it was taking the TV cord so that he couldn’t watch TV).

Our son is no longer physically violent or threatening to me and does not tease or hurt our dogs anymore. I am now working on his bad language towards me and that is greatly improved.

Then, about 3 weeks ago, our daughter, thank goodness, returned to me. She is much more grown up and appreciative of me now and even said to me yesterday ‘I thought I was right Mum but now I know I was wrong’. Though she herself is still at risk of acting violently towards her brother, she is really looking at herself and listening to me and I am totally confident now that with your program that I can discipline her to change her tendency towards violence to her brother (she is not violent to me anymore).

A big part of the change in the whole situation (where our daughter got the confidence to leave her father) was because I filed an Affidavit in the Family Court speaking out about everything that has happened in our family which came as a big shock and wakeup call to their father. Even though he has punished me repeatedly and harshly every time I have spoken up, because I have been using the principles of your program on him, his retaliation is slowly but surely diminishing.

I want to tell you that your program has been an absolute life-saver for our family, without the use of ‘the cops’. I have found that many police lack understanding and willingness to do anything, except for a very few, however despite that, I am managing to pull our family back from chaos to civilisation.

I am also continuing to use the philosophy of your program on my ex-husband as best as possible. Thank you very much, I will keep going.

C.


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