Youth Drinking Younger and Younger
Two seventh grade girls sit quietly in a classroom too scared to talk.
When they are asked to explain their "incident" they look at each other and stammer for words.
"There were some bottles involved" the group leader prompts them and they look uncertainly at each other.
These are kids who have already been busted and are at their first day of a school substance abuse program. They are not mature enough to be able to tell the program leader what everyone already knows.
It isn't because they are being evasive or ashamed and their lack of words isn't because they don't want to participate. The can't find words because they are speechless about what they have done.
They are so young that they honestly don't understand how they ended up in a substance abuse classroom. They think of themselves a pretty good kids and they know that what they did was stupid. They also know that they did it and they are scared to death.
It isn't the juniors and seniors that are getting buzzed on suds in the parking lot anymore. There is an alarming rise in teen drinking for the first time in almost a decade and there is a more concerning increase in young teen alcohol use.
Liquor is easier to get than beer and easier to cover up the taste in sweet juice or punch. The liquor is coming from a family member and the kid who has access is too afraid to go on the drinking experiment alone so they drum up the courage of a pack of friends.
The kids who are getting busted either have parents who notice off behavior or they go to school or a school event drunk and get caught. This means that the kids who are getting busted aren't even the one's in the most danger. They have parents who are paying attention and have enough sense of responsibility to go to school.
That is where the danger of how young they are really shows. These kids are so young that they know they are not supposed to be drinking so they go to school drunk in order to keep out of trouble. Think about that for a moment.
Thankfully there are programs and services evolving to meet this growing epidemic but we need to look closely at the live we are asking our children to live and try to discover why the prevalence rate of alcohol use in grades 6-9 is increasing.
We absolutly need to provide services, support and treatment to these kids but we really need to figure out what is feuling this!
