<p>So I found out some shocking (to me) information from my D home from college over this Christmas break. She is now 21 and a junior in a demanding engineering program. During high school, she was not part of the drinking crowd. Second semester of her college freshman year, she told me she started drinking occasionally, socially. I told her I was not happy with her underage drinking, but I wasn't naive enough to think that she wouldn't drink at all. A few days ago, I found out (through discussion with her) that she and her group of friends (all high-achieving engineering students) regularly (3 to 4 times a month) engage in what they call "Power Hour", which is drinking 6 beers in one hour. She of course insists that she does not have a problem, since she is choosing to do this, and doesn't participate all of the time. I have a huge problem with this for several reasons, i.e. safety and health issues, and academic concerns. In addition, there is alcoholism in our family, so we have always addressed this issue with our kids.
Has anyone else dealt with something similar? Any suggestions? I've already talked to her about my concern for her health and safety. I'm considering telling her that if she loses her scholarship $, she will have to pay that amount for her final year. Although that's not my primary concern, I do feel that she, to some extent, is choosing partying over additional study time.
Thanks for any comments.</p>
<p>You can certainly tell her that if she looses her scholarship, she will be responsible for the money. If you think that her grades are suffering because she parties too much, she might start paying more attention to grades.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, this is unlikely to dissuade her from binge drinking. There are plenty of very successful and high achieving students who drink a lot, and keep their grades up. I think you have a legitimate concern, but you have no real power over your adult daughter. All you can do is give her advice, and hope that she takes it…</p>
<p>First, welcome to CC. </p>
<p>I think you’ve done the right thing by discussing the health and safety considerations of binge drinking. </p>
<p>However, given that she is 21 and has successfully completed 5 college semesters in a demanding engineering program, I’d say the evidence points to level-headed partying. If she were younger or her grades were tanking, I’d say you have a lot to address. But since that doesn’t seem to be the case, financial threats may not be relevant to her.</p>
<p>ETA: 6 beers in one hour is a lot. By “level headed partying” I don’t mean to imply 6/60 is OK. It’s very dangerous. My reply is more based on the big picture considerations of health and grades.</p>
<p>Yikes, I would not like that either. I don’t think my 21 can afford to drink that much that quick…makes for a short night 6 in a night now that’s believeable… and how can they put that many ounces of liquid inside them in that short of time?? Humor aside, I’d talk to her about the health issues, the weight issues (not’s a ton of calories) and the potential for it becoming a problem habitually and with regard to her scholastic work. I wouldn’t want to be dramatic, but rather more of a dialogue. Really I can’t even imagine why that would be fun to chug a lug all that liquid that quickly even if they are “legal” and can do it.</p>
<p>Girls (or anyone!) drinking 6 beers in one hour! That is very dangerous! People underestimate the alcohol of beer because its diluted in 12 oz as opposed to 1 1/4 oz of hard liquor.</p>
<p>The “big picture” is that you are right to be concerned, especially with your family history. Your daughter shows signs of drinking alcoholically. The fact that it happens “only” once a month, or that she is maintaining good grades, would not make much of a difference to someone trained in recognizing alcoholism.</p>
<p>Your reaching out for help is a good first step. There are many excellent resources for family members of persons with drinking problems, including Al-Anon and the National Council on Drug and Alcohol Dependency. I urge you to keep following up.</p>
<p>Binge drinking scares the crap out of me. I live in Minnesota and every year there are one or two kids whose bodies are found frozen in the snowbank after a night of heavy drinking. I read an article that said if you could only tell your college kid one thing about drinking then let it be this “NEVER under any circumstances have more than 3 drinks in one hour”.</p>
<p>Here’s the good (or bad) news: If by the middle of her junior year your daughter’s grades haven’t suffered because of her drinking, they’re not likely to start to suffer now. She IS choosing partying over additional studying, but most kids choose SOMETHING from time to time over additional studying, and most of their parents are happy they do. It’s completely possible, even likely, that she and her friends have figured out how to balance academics and blowing off steam pretty well. You may not like how they are doing it, but you can’t count on grades to make them stop.</p>
<p>Moreover, I don’t have any science for this, but my impression is that for most kids drinking declines pretty steadily over their last two years of college. You are right to be concerned about alcoholism, but absent that from the standpoint of mere drinking your daughter is probably past the worst of it.</p>
<p>The real question – and I KNOW you don’t want to hear this – is, “What happens in the hour after ‘Power Hour’”? Most kids, if they’re not alcoholics, don’t drink just to drink. Nor do they drink so that they pass out and sleep it off until morning – although that may well be what happens. Usually, they are drinking to lower inhibitions, so that they feel more comfortable doing things they might otherwise be afraid to do. What things? I don’t know, and neither do you, yet. You might want to find out, but you’re not going to find out if the tenor of the conversation is a lecture about drinking.</p>
<p>In any event, at this point – a 21-year-old daughter, away from home, successful in a demanding academic program – all you really can do is (a) to make certain your daughter remembers to be worried about her own health and propensities to addiction (if any), and (b) to trust your own parenting over the past two decades. If you haven’t instilled good values in her yet, it’s not going to happen now. If you have instilled good values, they are going to survive the indiscretions of a college junior, and emerge pretty darn soon. </p>
<p>Don’t panic! The only thing that has changed recently is that you have found out about your daughter’s behavior. The behavior has probably been going on for awhile. And it has probably just about run its course, too.</p>
<p>JHS: Thanks for the good advice about discussing the hour after the “Power Hour”. I’ll definitely have that conversation, although it’s hard to keep the conversation from evolving to a lecture from me, and a defensive stance from her. Re: your comments about values, that’s what has been so shocking to me. We had a very close relationship, even through h.s. (never had to deal with the terrible teenage years I kept hearing about), and she always seemed like such a grounded, confident young woman, she was the last one I would have thought would be involved in binge drinking.
Anyway, it’s nice to have this forum as a sounding board. Thanks!</p>
<p>I agree with JHS regarding the diminishing drinking level as time goes by. I went to an HYP college and we (my circle of friends and I) drank most heavily Fr and Soph years. When we returned for our Junior year, I think it hit us that we were over the hump and “real life” was closer to us that we cared to think. Our partying declined dramatically (although by then, most of us were legal). Most of us were pretty level headed and knew our limits and would keep an eye out for our buddies who maybe crossed their threshold. </p>
<p>For the our last fling Senior year after finals but before graduation, we rented a beautiful beach house on the N Carolina coast of the Atlantic. It slept 16 but we shoved 20 guys and gals into it. There was beer around but we were pretty sober – pretty much wanting to absorb our camraderie before we had to split up.</p>
<p>Since graduating, I can count on one hand the times I’ve gone overboard. However, if any of the gruesome details of my earlier years had been known by my parents, they’d been shocked. Come to think of it, if MY girls were to behave like I did Fr and Soph years, I’d be (honestly) aghast. But I know I made it through OK. Best of luck to you</p>
<p>Values are helpful, but they will not prevent alcoholism. Your daughter needs to know that. And lecturing won’t help, either. </p>
<p>You need to talk to someone who’s been through this as a parent, which so far none of the posters have. I’d try a blog more directly focused on alcohol and parenting.</p>
<p>The alcohol in one beer is about the same as one mixed drink, where the 80 proof alcohol is diluted. </p>
<p>Would she drink 6 mixed drinks in one hour??? That’s one drink every 10 minutes!</p>
<p>Excuse me, Anon1982, but I HAVE been through this as a parent. And as a student – I could have written T26E4’s post myself.</p>
<p>You are absolutely right that neither values nor lectures will do anything about alcoholism, and I think if you read my earlier post carefully you will see that it reflects that view. The OP’s daughter needs to be aware of that as a danger, and needs to take responsibility for making certain she’s OK. I also know that there are myriad ways to be an alcoholic, and the girl’s drinking pattern does not in and of itself preclude alcoholism. On the other hand, the girl’s drinking pattern – if she was telling the truth – would be awfully rare for an alcoholic.</p>
<p>kc: Having your values does not mean that your daughter will behave exactly as you would wish at 21. One hopes it will mean that she doesn’t do any lasting damage, to herself or others, at 21, and she survives to 25 when she will start resembling what you hoped she would be a whole lot more.</p>
<p>And parents wonder why older kids lie or are not forthcoming about their private lives. She’s an above average normal girl. Let it go and keep your opinions to yourself. If it becomes a real problem you can step-in then.</p>
<p>And parents wonder why older kids lie or are not forthcoming about their private lives.</p>
<p>OK…Yes…It’s not a good idea to over-react when our kids tell us something “bad,” because they will close the lines of communication. </p>
<p>However, that doesn’t mean that we simply nod our heads and say…hmmm…was it fun? </p>
<p>When our kids tell us stuff that is dangerous, we need to show the same respect, but also the same caring LOVE, that we would if a friend told us this. We would kindly tell our friends that the behavior is dangerous and unhealthy.</p>
<p>barrons, the daughter told her parent about this. For the parent to not react would imply that this is a pattern of drinking that the parent isn’t concerned about.</p>
<p>But the parent does not feel that way. And experts consider six drinks on one occasion to be excessive single-occasion alcohol intake.</p>
<p>If either of my kids tells me something, I’m going to tell them how I feel about it. If they didn’t want my opinion, they could have kept the subject to themselves.</p>
<p>I don’t necessarily agree that drinking decreases after the first couple of years of college. I think it just changes. The kids are over 21, and instead of beer pong and frat party kegs, it is clubs and bottle service. “Cocktails” instead of “pre-gaming”. I think the older students hold the alcohol better and many are very high-functioning alcohol-abusers. It’s a problem.</p>
<p>Six beers in an hour. Yikes. The fun would definitely stop after about the third one for me. That doesn’t sound like quite enough to cause a medical emergency, unless somebody is very tiny, but it sure sounds like enough to spoil the rest of the evening (and the following morning as well). </p>
<p>The question is, why? I really don’t get this alcohol force-feeding ethic. When I was in college we drank a lot–I certainly drank a lot–but it was never about drinking as much as possible, as fast as possible. You drank as much as you felt like, and stopped when you’d had enough. Sometimes you might misjudge that, but never on purpose. Are these kids trying to hurt themselves?</p>
<p>kcmopca – thanks for posting this.</p>
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<p>Thanks kajon, you hit the nail on the head. I’m a very laid back parent except when it comes to two issues, binge drinking and drinking and driving. I know someone who as a young adult was binge drinking. He went into an alcoholic blackout, meaning that he had so much to drink in a short amount of time that his brain stopped recording what happened next. He got into his car and was the cause of an accident where five people died. He survived but spent four years in prison. He’s out now but what he did will haunt him for the rest of his life.</p>
<p>I don’t tell my kids not to drink. It’s not that I think they should drink but I don’t think think that kind of statement would be very effective. I tell them don’t binge drink and don’t drink and drive. It simply isn’t worth it. You aren’t telling your daughter not to drink, you’re telling her not to drink so much in a short period of time. She should be willing to do that.</p>