Do it for the kids
not because of the kids
“Was alcohol accessible to you as a child?”
“Was drinking normalized by your parents and their friends when you were growing up?
These are questions you should ask yourself if you are a young adult or middle aged and now struggling with alcohol use disorder and addiction.
I grew up in a household of partiers. My parents liked to have a good time. They had a tight knit group of friends, whose own children would hide out with me and my siblings downstairs in the basement TV room while they had “adult time” on a regular basis. We sat in a dark and musty room watching inappropriate HBO shows while our parents talked loudly, laughed too much, and by the sound of it — fell off of their chairs far too often.
Alcohol was not a mystery in my house, it was a fixture. Very similar to the microwave, TV remote, my sister’s curling iron — it was a tool with special value that got used a lot. I first asked for a sip of my mom’s beer when I was 8 years old. I remember it tasting stale, sweet, bitter and I didn’t hate it.
By the time I was 13 years old I was smoking cigarettes, stealing beers, and filling empty plastic 7Up soda bottles with clear booze from the kitchen cabinet — always careful to make sure the parents didn’t notice liquid was missing. Now that I’ve gotten myself into a destined cycle of alcohol abuse and substance disorder, I now know that they were not measuring or keeping tabs on the liquid levels of their alcohol bottles. If a bottle was empty, another one was added to the weekly grocery list, no questions asked.
Now I’m not saying my parents are bad. Or even alcoholics. My mother is loving and sweet and kind. We always had what we needed, we felt safe and protected. I have a couple stepdad’s, they were always decent. My parents worked hard, raised kids, and got shit done. I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s when parenting was very different. Parents didn’t cater to our every whim, there was no helicoptering or snowplowing — the adult needs came first, kids were expected to fall in line.
And we had a lot of idle time on our hands. We grew up without iPhones, apps, social media, and internet access — our boredom took us to Circle K with an older sibling who would buy us smokes and wine coolers. We would drive around getting drunk in the backseat while complaining about our little miserable lives.
Fast forward to me now, with a lifetime of drinking behind me. I also work hard, raise kids, and get shit done. And I have totally normalized drinking for my kids. Now that I am finally — for the first time ever — starting to dissect my drinking habits and understand the consequences of addiction, I am becoming hyper aware of the messaging behind alcohol and how it affects the people I love the very most.
As I go through this journey my eyes are opening to the many implicit and explicit problems of living in a culture soaked in alcohol. The direct affect on our children can be concerning. My daughter is now 13 years old. She accidentally took a big gulp of my wine a few years back during a party we were hosting. I was drinking my wine from a small glass canning jar that we often used for water, me saying “this is how the Europeans drink their wine”, but really I was doing it because I’d already had too much wine and I was trying to be discreet. She thought it was her water and was shocked and disgusted when she realized it was alcohol. She still tells that story to friends. It definitely held some impact for her, but it didn’t provoke me to change my behavior.
I don’t remember when my nightly wine routine began, but I do know why. As my days got busier with work and the needs of my kids continued to grow, I’d come home in the late afternoons pretty burnt. Laid out in front of me was a truck load of tasks and chores — dinner prep, homework, emails, bath time, laundry, dishes, clean up, etc. We all know about the emotional labor that burdens our working moms and caregivers. I feel it, big time, every day. And so I drink to deal with the stress. I drink because of my kids.
That message is thrown in our face by alcohol marketing everyday — mommy juice makes everything better. But how do you think that makes our kids feel? We are so terrible that our mommy has to drink just to deal with us. And the kicker is that drinking doesn’t make it easier to be with your kids. Drinking numbs all the good moments too, and intensifies the annoying ones. In my experience, drinking just makes me more irritated and grumpy.
So, not only are we showing our kids that drinking is a tool for parenting, we are also giving them the green light to think that drinking alcohol is a normal and healthy part of our daily lives — meal time, celebrations, family vacations, Tuesday nights — alcohol is always there with us. Why wouldn’t my kids want to drink at an early age, and use alcohol as a coping tool in their adult lives?
This realization stopped me in my tracks and has made me want to rewind and unwind the last 13 years with my kids. How many times have they seen me drunk? How many bottles of wine have I popped open at home in the kitchen while they do their homework? How many parties have we hosted with booze being center stage? How many times have I driven with them in the car after a couple drinks with friends? TOO MANY. The answer is too many times. After the initial dose of guilt and shame (maybe a lifetime of guilt and shame?), I’m on a personal mission to change that harmful and damaging message to my kids. The buck stops here, as they say.
Along with my own hard reset for 2021, I am dedicated to changing the way my children think about alcohol. It will no longer be normalized in my house. I feel like I’m navigating uncharted territory and going against the grain of society, which is exactly what we have to do when it comes to changing our views about booze. It’s a new kind of curriculum, a disruption of sorts. Firstly, personal boundaries have been set — my kids will never see me drunk again, I will never drink and drive with them again not even one sip, alcohol will no longer be treated as a comfort tool in our home.
The next steps are more complicated — how do you dismantle a lifetime of social conditioning around drinking? It may take the second half of my lifetime to do it, but it will be worth it if I can give my kids a new perspective and set them on a path free from addiction.
