Teenage alcohol and drug use: At best, parents know about it only half o...( alcohol or marijuana abuse or dependenc...),Health

Both Bierut and Fisher noted that "age of the child" was one of the most influential factors in terms of parental awareness of adolescent substance use. "Specifically, there was higher agreement between the reports of parents and older adolescents," said Bierut. "Parental agreement was highest with 16- to 17-year-olds, and lowest with 12- to 13-year-olds. This is very troubling because research has shown that starting to use alcohol and drugs at a young age is a risk factor for developing substance abuse or dependence in the future."

"In general," said Fisher, "we found that parent reports added very little information to our knowledge about adolescent substance use beyond what adolescents themselves were reporting, particularly when compared to other types of psychiatric disorders like ADHD and ODD. Our conclusion is that parents do not provide valuable information about their children's use of alcohol and drugs because they simply don't know about it." She added that researchers may want to reconsider using time and resources to question parents at all when it comes to issues of adolescent substance use, abuse or dependence.

The take-home message, said Bierut, is two-part in nature: research clearly indicates that teens are using alcohol and drugs. "Parents who were surveyed, however, were largely unaware of this. Although as parents we might like to think that our children are not reflected in these percentages, it is important to realize that our kids do have access to substances and might very well be using them."

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24-Sep-2006