Can You Make a Difference?
As parents, guardians, and trusted adults, you CAN make a difference. You can prevent your student from becoming yet another tragic statistic. Too many parents and guardians feel that they cannot influence young adults. Time and time again, they say:
"What can I say now? They're grown adults." or "There’s just no use. They'll do what they want anyway and don't care what we say."
Such statements grossly underestimate the influence that parents and family members can have in providing information that can shape their student's behaviors.
However, those in the parenting role will be much more effective and influential if they remember that talking to their student about alcohol is a process, not an event. In other words, discussing alcohol is not a onetime conversation — it’s a series of conversations that occur over a period of time.
As a result, it’s not expected that you'll browse this website once and have a masterful idea of all the information you'll need to have a convincing talk with your college students. The rest of this website is filled with ways for you to talk to your student about the dangers of alcohol throughout the entire process.
As you continually talk to them about alcohol, feel free to visit this site as often as you need to learn helpful strategies and strong communication skills, and to gain additional helpful information.