A mother from Henrico County in Virginia found out just how common these parties are after discovering one had formed in her house on the night of December 17th, the paper said. “All I heard from [the parents] was ‘Don’t worry. It happens all the time,’” she told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “I was shocked. Now I’m hearing these young people will just go to any place that’s empty and just take over. No fear. Getting alchol seems to be no problem for them.” Such drinking parties can lead to fatal or serious car crashes when the kids attempt to manage their way home after the party’s over. Two of these parties may have led to crashes on New Year’s Day in Henrico, the paper said. One man was killed in one of the crashes.

A new study out from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was published in the January 2007 issue of the medical journal Pediatrics, highlights this problem. It discovered that 45 percent of teens drank alcohol within a period of a month. Sixty-four percent of that number admitted to having five or more drinks at a time. That study also reported that heavy drinking is linked with a number of dangerous activities, including sex and violence.

But the good news is that there is a way to control your teens’ drinking. “Contrary to popular belief, parents remain the greatest influence over their children’s behavior,” Richard Gallagher, Ph.D, Director of the Parenting Institute and the Thriving Teens Project at New York University’s Child Study Center, said in a press release.

Furthermore, he said, “…Parents can maximize that influence to reduce the likelihood that their children will engage in binge drinking.” In the press release, Gallagher offered several suggestions for parents:

• Be precise in explaining your policy on drinking. “Clearly state what actions you expect your teen to take when confronted with substance use,” Gallagher said.

• Research things your child can do that do not involve alcohol. “Then,” says Gallagher, “keep track of where, with whom, and what your teen is doing after school and during other free times.”

• Make sure—as much as it is possible to—that your kids are not near alcohol in the home. Teens, Gallagher notes, tend to steal alcohol from liquor cabinets and the like.

• Talk about the risks that come with the abuse of alcohol. “Although teens are not highly influenced by such information, some discussion of negative consequences have some impact on the decisions they make.” The key, says Gallagher, is to focus on the way alcohol impairs judgment and opens the user up to harm.

Because this is such a serious issue, the NYU Child Study Center is researching other ways parents can keep kids away from alcohol, and from drugs too. “Clinicians and researchers are testing the impact that workshops for parents of middle school students have on improving parenting practices and what effect those practices have on the children’s substance use during their high school years,” the release reports. This NYU test will involve parents and teens of more than 400 families. It will be titled “Thriving Teens: Parenting Practices for Positive Growth.” It “should provide useful insight,” says the press release, “into how parents can help their teens avoid risky actions.”

NYU’s Child Study Center was created a decade ago. It was incorporated into the NYU School of Medicine as the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry just last year.

For more information about the Child Study Center, go to their official Web site .

Until next time!