Wednesday, December 21, 2011

The Holidays, Your Family and Your Community

The holidays can be a time of joy and celebration but they also serve as a temptation for young people to drink.

SADD Chairman, Stephen Wallace, writes,"Young people face added danger during this special season otherwise known for celebration and good cheer. The culprit? Often, it's alcohol."

School break offers up unstructured and perhaps unsupervised time and thus some significant risk - especially when we add in the propensity of some adults to promote alcohol-included events as a way to mark Christmas, Hanukkah or New Year's Eve."

You can read the rest of his opinion article in the Times of Trenton New Jersey Paper.

This Holiday season we encourage you set boundaries with your teens, check in on them, stay up until they arrive home, set a good example, consider having an alcohol free holiday party and spend time together as a family making memories.

Research tells us that, families who celebrate special occasions are more likely to raise kids who have a strong sense of identity, are healthy, have close ties to family members, and succeed in school. 1

For more ideas from Parent Further on practicing meaningful traditions with your family this holiday season click here.

1 Barbara Fiese and others, "A Review of 50 Years of Research on Naturally Occurring Family Routines and Rituals: Cause for Celebration?" Journal of Family Psychology 16, no. 4 (2002): 381-390.

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