Quick Start Preparation Course (FREE)

Download our Quick Start Preparation course as our FREE gift to help you stop drinking alcohol and get the best start to your new life. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD.

Parents Alcohol Drinking Encourages Our Children | Teen Alcohol Use

by | Stop Drinking Alcohol | 7 comments

Today, I want to talk about parents and their drinking, parents encouraging their children to drink.

I’m not saying that there’s any parent out there, although they are many, but I’m not painting anyone with the brush of doing it, but there are a lot of people who would deliberately give their children alcohol to drink and try and instill a habit.

I know this happens a lot in European countries.

It’s a watered down version of what the real stuff is, but it’s still a version of it.

It’s still introducing toxins into a child’s body, to their brain and more importantly to their culture, to their mind and what they think about alcohol.

We learn through imitation, all of us learn through imitation, mostly.

It’s all by either copying what someone else has said, what somebody has done, mostly; or reading a book or seeing a screen.

But mostly, what we encounter are as we are growing up.

They reckon that by the time you’re 5 or 6 years old, maybe even before, a lot of your most fundamental ideas or ideals and culture would have been set by then.

What you believe is true, your most fundamental beliefs in life would have been set by that time, fairly young anyway, I can’t be sure of the specific date.

So, mom and dad are our first teachers.

They’re the ones that teach the basics of the most fundamental stuff, the basics of what you’re going to carry with you through the rest of your life.

If little Johnny sees mommy and daddy drinking, then he sees that as being normal.

It’s going to be a normal thing for him, imprinted into his brain.

There’s a topic called Neuroplasticity and they’re talking about how your brain changes and how you can change your brain,

but there are certain parts of your brain which are indelibly fixed from an early age.

This science is very junior, they’re not advanced yet.

A lot of this is based on MRI imaging and how they see the brain lighting up, the brain activity to certain stimuli.

The way we think and the way we emote are telling scientists a lot about how out brain responds.

It’s not very precise.

You’re seeing colours and electrical activity, but it’s very basic stuff. A lot of these things might change as we progress.

To get back to the point, all kids are going to learn through imitating their parents.

Parents are the first teachers.

We send out mixed signals as well, by the time the kids grow up, they’ve got a healthy disrespect for a lot of the drugs around.

I never tried heroin but I tried a lot of different drugs but I never tried heroin because that was the one drug that I always saw as the most dangerous drug on earth.

Once you got in, you were addicted and you ended up living in a squat that had shit all over the place and had addicts around who just didn’t care about themselves or anybody else, and all they wanted to do was go out and steal to find the next fix.

That’s what I envisioned if I ever started out on heroin and all it would take would be one injection or to chase the dragon once and I’d be hooked for the rest of my life.

I’d be on the slippery slope and it wouldn’t take very long before I was down there.

I know that now to be false, but I’m glad for that teaching because it made me steer clear from heroin and I was offered heroin plenty of times.

Not only did it make me steer clear of the heroin it made me steer clear of the person who was fucking offering me.

I’d sort of think of them ‘you’re a bastard. I don’t like you at all. Why would you even try and get me into liking that stuff? I thought you liked me but you’re trying to kill me’.

I’ve read a lot of stuff so I know that those facts are not true, but like I said, it helped e to stay clear of the stuff.

I wish it had been the same for alcohol.

Now, I’m not for prohibition.

I don’t believe you can stop people from taking stuff by merely saying to them ‘you’re not allowed to take this, we’ll put you in prison for doing that’.

What I’m talking about is basic education.

We have to start this basic education in our homes by not encouraging our children to drink, by not drinking ourselves.

You can get a child to eat fruits and vegetables when they’re young.

You can have a healthy respect for exercise by taking them out and exercising them when you’re exercising, making it fun, making it a part of their lives.

This is nothing about forcing people to do anything, this is about how you raise your children.

In some aspects, I’ve done a great job of raising my son and in other aspects, I’ve done a really crappy job, and one of those aspects was through drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, and just putting those in as a normalized part of life.

As I said many times before, that would be forever in my shame.

Like other parents, we do some things well and other things we don’t do so well.

That’s just life.

I think all parents are going to suffer from that from one degree or another.

We are the first teachers.

We have to tell our kids that alcohol is a drug, and no matter what they tell you outside, this is a drug.

Cigarette is a drug.

I’ve spoken about this on few occasions and I know that my knowledge of this side of alcohol is not that great at the moment on how to do this, how to deal with this and how to teach people, young people, how to get them to shy away from any drug, and to look at life as being a drug in itself.

We’ve got more opportunities these days than we ever had in our entire history before.

The past was a great time but this is a good time.

Science, technology, this is all creating a great world.

It’s how you look at this world and how you use that technology and that science.

This is where the problems lie.

It’s not in the actual technology itself.

The more advanced we get, the more opportunities there are for education, careers, health and the more important it’s going to be in the future for our children to grow up in a world where they have the full use of their faculties.

That their brain is not being compromised in any way shape or form.

All alcohol is ever going to do is compromise your brain.

It doesn’t matter if you’re only an occasional drinker, in my mind you’re putting a toxin into your system which is going to have an effect.

There is a cause and effect. The cause and effect is not just cause is you drinking alcohol and effect is you getting drunk.

There’s more long-term effects to this.

There’s more to this than meets the eye.

It’s what appears you ‘I drink this and it helps me to relax and socialise’, but what the fuck is going on underneath all that, underneath the surface?

What’s going on in your brain after the drunkenness has worn off?

Because the alcohol is still in there, it’s still interfering with the chemical balances that are in your brain, it’s still doing something inside your brain, and the more you drink, the more of a detrimental cost that’s going to be.

Look at the amount of people that die every year from alcohol, the amount of conditions that are caused by drinking alcohol, over 200.

One-quarter of the worldwide population who are between the ages of 20 and 39, our young people, are killed as a result f drinking alcohol.

So, responsibility lies with the parents first and foremost, in those first formative years and throughout their childhood.

Just don’t drink, don’t have alcohol in your house, don’t encourage your children to do that.

I wish I could go back and start all over again to when I was 24/25 when my son was born.

I wish I could not drink that and not ever bring that into the house and never bring it into my son’s awareness as something that I do, or that my wife did.

She’d definitely still be alive now if it wasn’t for the alcohol, if we’d changed that one thing, but we didn’t.

There’s no point looking back.

There are so many people listening to this video who have got that opportunity to really open themselves up and think about what alcohol is.

This is a toxin.

First and foremost, it’s a drug.

It’s a drug that causes more harm than any other drug bar nicotine.

You’ve got 3 ½ million people dying every year from drinking alcohol, from alcohol use.

3.3 million.

You’ve got 5 million people dying every year worldwide from smoking, from using nicotine.

This is all the rest of the illegal drugs combined – I’m not talking about pharmaceuticals because that’s a completely different story.

But all the rest of the illegal drugs combined…heroin, cocaine, angel dust, crack, all that shit.

That amounts to about 250000.

So, it’s only a drop in the ocean compared to what the legal drugs are, and these are the things that we’re encouraging our children to do.

If I can get one parent to stop drinking or smoking and think about their children, think about what example they’re giving to the children, then it’s worth me making all these videos.

That’s going to be my goal in life, to try and encourage young people not to do this, not to start thins, not to even want to start this.

That’s the whole fucking point.

There are a lot more young people now saying ‘I don’t want to do this. Why would I fucking want to get drunk? I’m out with my mates having fun. Why would I want to introduce alcohol?’

There are more and more people coming to that acceptance.

A lot of that is down to their parents and how their parents have taught them.

A lot of it is down to their culture and what their culture is teaching them, their particular culture, not the wide culture that we’re living in.

Because the wide culture is causing us to drink.

There is advertising out there, everywhere you look there’s alcohol and it’s getting more and more normalized.

It’s a normalized part of who we are, but I’m talking about their little community, their friends, that culture that they are developing for themselves that’s keeping them away from alcohol. 60% of the world’s population don’t drink so you’re in the minority when you do drink, not when you don’t drink.

Maybe just not in our countries, but there’s something to be said for starting out and educating your children from an early age.

If you have any questions or comments, leave them down below.

Go on over to the website, you will find the audio underneath the video.

If you want to get a copy of hang loose without booze which will help you to relax and destress yourself while raising your kids… I know it’s a tough job without resorting to alcohol.

If you’ve signed up but haven’t got a copy, then just shoot me an email at kevin@alcoholmastery.com and I’ll send you the link and you can get it at Udemy.

I know it’s a stressful job but alcohol is only going to add to your stress.

In the long term, it doesn’t help your stress at all, it just builds up more stress because of the damage you’re causing to your body and mind.

There are a lot better ways to relax without using alcohol.

It’s never too late to teach your kids.

I beat myself up for this, in my past I say ‘I wish I hadn’t done that. I wish I hadn’t drunk’, but at the end of the day, I’m doing it now.

For the last 3 ½ years I’ve been doing that and I’ll continue to do that.

I’ll continue to encourage my son to stop drinking and stop smoking especially when he starts having kids of his own, to give them an early start in life. That’s the best gift that you can give your kids.

But, it’s never too late. My child is now a full grown man and I’m still working on it.

If you’re a parent and you listened to this, I hope you got something from that.
Until next time…

BEING A PARENT MEANS LOVING YOUR CHILDREN MORE THAN YOU’VE EVER LOVED YOURSELF.

Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!

You May Also Enjoy…

7 Comments

  1. Sarah Ward

    Thank you so much for that one Kevin. I have a son who just turned 4 last week, and that has really struck a cord with me. In fact it brought tears to my eyes. He asked me in the supermarket last week if I was going to buy wine!. I didn’t even realise that he knew what that was and it scared me.

    Reply
    • Kevin O'Hara

      Great age…I wish I’d quit back when my son was 4. You’ve got a great life ahead of you.

      Reply
  2. Geraldine

    Excellent points Kevin. I wish a warning was put on all bottles of alcohol same as cigarettes.
    Smoking here in Ontario Canada has acquired an antisocial label and many people don’t smoke.
    It destroyed the tobacco industry here but that’s not a bad thing.
    Too many people profit from alcohol sales and the government backs it 100%.
    I am going to speak to out local MPP about it. I voted for them in the last election but I see our premier speaking proudly about the recent introduction of beer into the supermarkets.
    It makes my blood boil.

    Reply
  3. Rick

    Thank you again. These videos are a big part of my program. I watch everyday. And some I watch over and over. Im getting positive for once instead of thinking about ill never do this I cant stay SOBE. I can or i should say we can. Thank you so much

    Reply
    • Kevin O'Hara

      Everyone can do this… Alcohol has no natural place in our lives… Best of luck to you

      Reply
  4. Hilary

    Thank you for this video and all of your videos. I have a 3 and 4 year old and it has been so stressful these past few years raising them. But, your are 100% right about alcohol only adding to your stress. I used to think I needed to drink to decompress after chasing these kids around and surviving all their shenanigans, now I’ve found alternative ways to relax. I listen to your videos everyday and have been off the drink for 37 days now. Thank you Kevin for helping me see the light and turn my life around.

    Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.