Ever wonder whether parents offering sips of alcohol to their older children and teens could lead to unfortunate outcomes? Certainly there may be benefits for parents to educate their children about alcohol by introducing them to it with all the caveats of a teen needing to drink responsibly and certainly not drive under the influence, but does the early introduction to alcohol by giving sips help or hurt a teen in terms of their social behaviors? Wadlowski et al. (10.1542/peds.2015-2611) explored this question in a new study being released in our journal this week by enrolling more than 1700 parent-child dyads in Australia into his study and following them over a year through surveys. During this time the authors explored whether parents who supply sips are associated with an increased risk of that teen demonstrating substance use with peers in an unsupervised setting.
Unfortunately in this study, that appears to be the case as parents who gave their older children sips reported a year later that their children were more engaged with substance-using peers than those who did not introduce sips. It is possible that peers approached a teen to try alcohol before parents offered sips—and parents offered the sips to try to normalize the behavior only in the home, but the results as reported are concerning and make one wonder whether even giving sips exacerbates a teen’s alcohol usage more than one would like.
Do you encourage parents to give sips of alcohol to educate their children about alcohol or speak against this practice? We would love to hear your thoughts and views on this study by responding to this blog, posting a comment with the article or adding your input on our Facebook or Twitter links.
