Teenage daughter - binge drinker?

[smartster]

My 16 year old daughter is always coming home drunk - any advice on how to make her drink more 'sensibly' would be appreciated?

[shyashley]

Try taking away the things she holds dear each time she turns up drunk ~ Money, Music etc ~ and then tell her if she's going to drink then she must be an adult now, so she can do her own cooking, washing and ironing ~ assuming she doesn't do this already ~ and see if the sudden surge of responsibility changes her attitudes any.

[Lennon]

Are you close to your daughter - is it possible to talk to her? Can you ask her why it is she's drinking? Is it coz everyone else is doing it, or she likes the feeling of being drunk or coz its more 'exciting' as she's underage? I remember coming home drunk on cider when I was 15. I wasn't under peer pressure to drink, I wanted to to see what it felt like and coz it was fun so to speak. But when I came home and I was late and my Dad just looked at me - didn't yell at me or anything - but the look on his face just said how dissapointed he was in me. I'm very very close to my Dad and knowing I'd let him down was enough to make me curb my ways, and I hardly drunk after that. If I did, I didn't come home late or plastered.

[treaclefight]

photograph the evidence, show it to her when sober, then blackmail, my dad did it to me, worked a treat

[xyzzy@bok]

Not nice; see if you can manage to get her arrested and locked up for the night for being drunk. Nicer; get her on videotape while drunk. good luck :-)

[woodpam]

If she suffers the morning after, you could try ignoring her state when she comes in but expect her to do all the normal things the next day, like get up, go to school or work or similar. If you don't hold back from hoovering around her and generally make her appreciate the consequences of her behaviour it might help her to decide to moderate her drinking herself. I've seen two children through their teenage years and am nearly there with the third, I totally sympathise with your worries. Hang on in there though, there comes a time when they experiment less and settle down a bit.

[cucumbers]

how about getting drunk when she is sober to make her see how stupid she looks when she is drunk. She may feel differently about what she is doing. It may be you are teetotal or not regular drinkers in which case you wil have to adopt an attitude towards younger peoples drinking. We are going to allow our daughter to drink ( not to any degree of strength ) from the age of about seven ( dependant on her attitude and aptitude ) so that the consumption of alchohol is an accepted part of of life and not a source of escapeism, rebellion or excitement. Peer pressure seems to be a major element in drinking in teenagers so to reduce the " wow " factor it may be possible to allow a certain level of drinking to be acceptable but to overstep the mark means discipline such as grounding or early curfew. be leniant to a point but strict above that point. Do not try to prevent your daughter from drinking. Just try to disuade her with some reasoning.

[coemgen]

We all do it, I know I certainly did. I got drunk a lot from the age of 15 until about 19. Instead of giving her a hard tiome about it, try to find out if she is unhappy about anything in her life, I drank because it stopped me from focussing on how lonely, fat and unattractive I felt when I was sober. It may be worth explaining the dangers of drinking excessively in a calm way without nagging.

[Nelli]

Yep, you've got to try and talk to her, and show that you're worried more than angry, most of us went out and got drunk when we were young, but most of us usually had one really bad night, which would put us off for a while...."I'm never drinking again"....sound familiar? My point being if she's drinking a lot, all the time, or at least very often, then maybe you consider that something else could be causing her to do this.

[Perkreidy]

Hi there, Personally there's nothing really you can do, except talk to her about it. Believe me when she starts getting REALLY BAD hangovers it'll soon change her tune on drinking.