Dinner is Served

By Brianna Christiansen

It is only in a teenager’s nature to feel the need to rebel against their parent’s morals and what they know is wrong. Recent reports from The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University show that teenage boys and girls who have in frequent family dinners are more likely to stumble down the path of drugs including alcohol and marijuana. A “frequent dinner” is classified as five to seven times a week, so those who sit down and have dinner three times or less a week are at a risk of four times higher to use tobacco. The potential of alcohol use is doubled, and marijuana use is two and a half times likelier.

The ability to get a hold of drugs and alcohol within an hour or less seems to be more likely among the teenagers who do not have frequent dinners, just as ones who do have a perpetual dinner schedule claim to not have this ready access to alcohol, prescription drugs, and marijuana.

Over the last decade, it has become a top priority to enforce parents to engage in their children’s lives because it’s been shown that parents who set aside time to have conversation and discuss issues happening in their child’s lives are more apt to raise healthy kids free of drugs. Teenagers who will willingly have family dinners with their parents say that their relationships with their parents are great and that closer relationships result in a drug free lifestyle for their kids. Parents, who aren’t as concerned with checking in on their kids when they go out, should expect nothing but that their child could be experimenting with drugs.  If a teenager knows that they do not have any worries while using drugs, they will usually continue doing so.