More parents giving children alcohol at home

Would you give your under-aged child alcohol at home? It’s becoming popular in U.S. households.

A new study shows that more than 700,000 kids in the U.S. ages 12-14 are drinking alcohol. And a large percentage of the kids are getting the alcohol from their parents.

In the past month, more than 200,000 kids were given alcohol by a parent or other adult family member, according to a report from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

According to SAMHSA, 45 percent got alcohol from a parent or other family member or they took it from their home without permission.

We got tons of comments on our Smart Family Facebook page, with the majority of people disagreeing with the trend. But some parents say it’s a cultural thing, that they grew up with their parents giving them sips of wine and now they barely drink at all.

So what do you do if you drink alcohol and you don’t want to feel like a hypocrite in front of your kids?

Shelly Mowrey, with drugfreeaz.org, says, “Get over it! Even if you experimented with alcohol as a teen today's world is much different. There are different drinks, different drugs and as a parent we have to do everything we can to protect our children. If they ask you if you drank alcohol, be honest for example you can yeah, I did, but it was a dumb thing to do. Maybe tell a story of a friend who was in an accident as a result of drinking and driving. Don't take a chance.”

Mowrey suggest that a good way to talk to your kids about drinking would be to teach them on how the brain develops. When you are in your teen years your brain hasn’t fully developed where at 21 your brain has.

Some parents think it's OK to let their kids drink inside the household as long as they take the keys away from them. Mowrey would advise that’s not a good idea. Kids who start drinking before they turn 16 are 3 times as likely to become addicted to alcohol.

Kids that were allowed to drink in their home were found to be more likely to drink outside their home than those that weren’t allowed to drink alcohol at home.

Buckeye just became the first city in Maricopa County to pass a social host ordinance. This means that parents will now be held responsible if their kids are underage drinking in their homes.