← Raising Good Humans
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- [00:01]
Professor Rob Taurisi
The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
- [00:10]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Welcome to Raising good humans. I'm Dr. Eliza Pressman, and today's episode is a conversation with Professor Rob Taurisi. I wanted to have this conversation with him because he talks about all the evidence that we have in behavioral decision making and substance misuse prevention and how we can use that to inform our decisions about how to support our kids. About teen drinking. He has decades of research that he shares insights on. He talks about developmental factors influencing alcohol use among adolescents and emerging adults and the transition from high school to college. We're going over things like peer environments and specifically some of the alarming data on blackout drinking and alcohol use disorders. But more importantly, the concrete ways we can respond, how we can set limits but also be supportive, how we can promote our kids telling us the truth without promoting their use of substances. All the complexities that make it really challenging to raise teenagers today. I thought this was such a helpful conversation, so I wanted to share it with you because this is the time of year for those of you with younger kids. It may seem a little premature, but when you have older kids, the summer and all the celebrations and all of the kind of freedom that comes with it also comes with new discussions to have about how to support our kids so that they are not going down that path of dangerous drinking or problematic substance misuse. And I just want to give a quick shout out to anybody who has kids who are graduating because graduations are happening this week and next week. I have my own daughter's graduation today, so I just want to say I am thinking of you. I am holding you. I know it's a weird thing because if things are going right, these kids are going to fly and we are so happy and it's so joyous. And also it comes with mixed feelings because it's a huge transition. We have worries, we have sadness, but we have so much hope and so much gratitude and all of those feelings we should be feeling. It's totally appropriate. I was trying to just be all positive, and then I realized that would not be authentic. And I want my kids to know that these beautiful transitions are filled with so many different emotions and that that is so, so normal. I'm sending love because this is a big, big time. And I hope this episode is super helpful. It is not meant to cause stress. It's meant to empower you with information so that you can make the best decisions to support your family.
- [03:05]
Professor Rob Taurisi
So one thing we learned is that everybody's drinking goes up between 17 and 18 in 18, 19 so the transition from being in your home to now not living in your home or living at places like Penn State. And so kids that were not interested in alcohol at all, who didn't drink at all in high school, maybe some people might characterize them as a little nerdy. They go from being non drinkers to light drinkers. When I say light drinkers, I mean they'll now drink on weekends, but they'll try not to get drunk. Right. They're going to keep it in check to some level. But they're college students and they're in a very high risk environment and so they probably will be drunk. The people that were getting drunk sometimes in high school will now get really drunk on weekends. Like they, we categorize them. It's called some, you know, high heavy episodic drinking. So they'll drink a lot in a particular night. They might not drink all the time like that, but they'll drink to the point where they're at high risk for acute consequences. And then we have people that drank a lot in high school who will become heavy or high intensity type drinkers. They'll not only experience, you know, a significant amount of Q console, blacking out, this, that, the other thing, but they will also start to show some signs of tolerance. And a lot of people think tolerance is a good thing, like I can drink more and I can handle my liquor. Well, you're probably suggested to a drug that's not a good thing. That means that you need more alcohol to feel the same effect. And from what we know about science, it doesn't work like, hey, two drinks is better than three. Well, for them it's not, you know, they have to get to the four or five really quickly. And four or five does have an impact. So we see everybody going up and then we turn to parents and we say, so what are some of the concerns you have, knowing what I just shared with you, that your child's going to enter this new glut. They're going to go from your house to my house at Penn State, not literally, but figuratively. They're going to have 45,000 new buddies, which is different than high school, that they might have had 500 people that they knew. And so from that standpoint, we asked about concerns, we asked about what do they do in their home to try and prevent problems from occurring the concerns they have. And then we share a little bit about what the data shows and then we get their thoughts on it. Well, we do this so we talk to a lot of parents, we Know the data so well. We did a study back in spring of 23 and we asked 80 young people to wear these bands for a month. And we had a comparison group of 40 people we asked not to wear the bands. Want to check to see if wearing the bands change your behavior? We don't have evidence that we that it did. But they wore the bands, and the bands sample their blood alcohol concentration every 20 seconds. So we get a now, instead of asking them, how many drinks did you have and how much time did you drink it and how drunk were you? We actually have a nice smooth graph of what their drinking looks like in terms of rise rates, peaks, how long alcohol is in their body. And we wanted to sample drinkers because if we got the non drinkers in our sample, we'd get nothing. So we just, we asked people, if you're a male, if you drank on average four drinks in a night, if you're a female, if you drank over three drinks in a night. And then we added one more criterion. And it said in the last semester, since this is the spring, we talk about the fall, did you go out and drink and maybe not remember part of it, Scientific terms, we call that a partial blackout. In their terms, they're like they call it on a Saturday night. And so that's the criteria for being in the study. So you asked me what surprised me. Remember, we've done so many trials, countless, right. In this sample. And I want to qualify because I did mention Penn State and I work at Penn State and republish in Scientific Journal. It's a Northeastern university, so I've kind of given that away. But I also want to qualify. Penn State's not alone, and they're not exactly someone that we should hold to a standard saying, oh, it's so much worse. Okay, people wore the bands. We categorized their drinking. They reported that they had a blackout. Drinking one out every three. Drinking one out every three drinking. That surprised me. I went one out of every three drinking. Yikes. Wow. Okay, that's one. And then we do measure to see if people are showing signs and symptoms of an alcohol use disorder. And for your listeners, an alcohol use disorder might have been called alcoholism a while ago, and now it's called disorder. And there's criteria for it. We observed higher than what we'd expect. Like if we, if we looked at this, people were older students, not necessarily first year students, we would expect maybe 10% to 15% to show those signs and symptoms. Ours as well, at least double that. I mean, which goes really well. With one out of three black athletes. That sort of caught me off going too, because people always say, is drinking going up? You know, I don't know, it's. And, and, well, we don't have that developmental data because we didn't do this study 15 years ago because we didn't have these sensors, by the way. But what we saw was concerning enough that we wrote four different grants. One grant is to look at developmental factors that lead to increased blackouts. One was to look at. We know that just pure quantity of drinking isn't the key, it's the manner in which you drink. So we have another grant that we're looking at more intense examination of what happens when people blackout to get a better understanding of these blackout experts are. One of my postdocs, she's going to be a professor at Oklahoma next year. She published a series of papers on blackouts with us. But the most notable thing for me is that again, no surprise, when somebody blacks out, they experience more consequences on the nights they blackout versus the ones they don't. But we found that they also experience more severe consequences on those nights. Like things that are, you know, sort of somewhat life changing. So that surprises me, right? So when we start looking at things in a micro daily level over a month, following people at bands and then looking at their life experiences during that snapshot window of a month, and we go, wow, that's now normal. That's like, this is what we're seeing. One out of three drinking nights is a blackout. Here's the other one. I was curious about this because we've done this for a really long time. You think we would have done this 20 years ago or 10 years ago, 15 years ago? We looked at, we did this work where we studied students for the four years every semester. And we were looking at a number of different things, but one thing we did was I wanted to know, for a student that's walking on campus for the first time this fall, 18 years old, first time going to college, what can they expect to experience over the next four years in terms of consequences from just social drinking? And I've asked people the question, now that I know the data, it's published, so you could know it too. But how many think, what do you think is the number for the typical kid? Typical kid, not heavy drinker. Not that I'm not going to ever go near alcohol. Just the average kid walking. We don't know anything about them. I didn't think they're average. How many consequences do you think they'll experience? In four years?
- [10:27]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Well, I don't know.
- [10:28]
Professor Rob Taurisi
It's a long. All right, I know.
- [10:31]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
I really want to. I really want to know. Yeah.
- [10:34]
Professor Rob Taurisi
100 consequences.
- [10:36]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Oh, my God.
- [10:37]
Professor Rob Taurisi
And they're not just like, oh, I woke up the next day and I was a little hungover.
- [10:41]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
I had a headache.
- [10:42]
Professor Rob Taurisi
Right. There's such serious consequences at high frequency that you wouldn't, you know, that you.
- [10:47]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Wouldn'T think about are the consequences. So, and after we talk about this, I want to, I want to backtrack to earlier in childhood and middle school and high school to sort of get you to that point about prevention and trajectory and what gets us to this point. But I am curious, like, are there some kids for whom the consequences actually change behavior and for some where it has absolutely no impact and you know that these are the, the ones that are at the absolute highest risk.
- [11:20]
Professor Rob Taurisi
Well, but, you know, here, every individual is going to be a little different. Right. So, so what, what I'm going to say now represents if I was going to go try to do prevention program to hit the largest group of people. Right? Yeah. So in that study that we said, everybody goes up, you know, and, and by the way, we did two set studies to get that data. We did one at multiple universities and one at one university and follow them intensively. So the fact that we had converges gave us more confidence, saying, hey, this is really happening. So what we learned from that was that when those first year, everybody goes up, like the light drinkers become, you know, the non drinkers become light, lighter become more regular, the regular become heavy, whatever that high water mark was in the fall semester, that stayed that way through four years, which suggests that unless you do something to disrupt it going up, it's not going to change. Even though we now know they're experiencing consequences and serious ones, like waking up in a place that I didn't realize I was, you know, things like that, you know, and some unfortunately were, you know, arrests or assaults or. And so not. This isn't just like, yeah, you know, I gotta hang now, you know, so, yeah, so. So it doesn't, you know, if you were to say, do some people learn from their mistakes and they change? I would say, yeah, but there's just as many that don't. So the average people, we're not seeing a consistent pattern of, you know, I burnt my finger, I'm not gonna touch the stove.
- [12:48]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
I want to take a little break to tell you about a very distinct podcast that I've been listening to that I think you'll be Very into. It's called Pulling the Thread and the host is New York Times best selling author Elise Loonan. Each week Elise sits down with today's leading thinkers and experts to try to answer life's big questions. And these are really deep, deep big questions like why do we do what we do? How can we know and love each other better? What does it look like to have a meaningful life? How can we come together to heal and build a more beautiful world? She's not just talking about light stuff. It's really beautiful. And while you'll see some big name guests, I'm pulling the thread. I love how Elise also uncovers more unexpected voices and the way she digs deep into big, complex ideas. This is the kind of podcast where you will happily learn and grow, listen and follow. Pulling the Thread now for free. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, a new episode drops every week and you don't want to miss them. So what do you do? So, and then I really do want to go back to earlier, but if you, if you were designing an intervention, a prevention, which we do, I guess, which you do, and an intervention here, what could you tell parents who aren't enrolled in said intervention and prevention programs, knowing this information?
- [14:07]
Professor Rob Taurisi
Well, actually I think parents could do a lot. You know, that's what I, that's actually that was my avenue when I was younger, right? I was, I, I, well I was working with adults and they were hard to change, 30s, 40s, 50s. And I wanted to get younger so I can really make a difference. And I was going to work with adolescents when I first started and I thought about doing school based work. And one of the issues that I ran up against with schools is that first off, it's really hard to get at. The second is that schools don't want to say, hey, if you're drinking, this is what you do because know they're not allowed to. Right. I can understand the arguments in that way. So I thought I would go with parents because parents get to choose the direction they want to go. So for me, right from the beginning I was thinking parents. And while I was thinking parents, everyone else was telling me, you have a good career, why do you want to do this? Because we know that kids don't listen to their parents. You know, as they get older, they listen less. And there's a great article that came out, I think in 90 by David Hawkins and Richard Catalano, who are actually my friends and they, they came out and basically their work said that, you know, parents are not going to be an effective mechanism for change because kids don't listen to them. And I didn't, I didn't think that was the case because I thought, hey, look, parents are really different. The relationships are really different. There's so many different things parents could do. I think if you look at the average parent, maybe you're going to find that that doesn't really work quite so well. But here we're professionals. Can't we give them more to, to work with? I sat down and I said to a parent, look, I want to spend the next 16 hours with you. I'd get no one to sign up. But if I said, I have something that 10 minutes might help you, you know, but you remember, it's a 10 minute dosage, they'd all sign up for the most part. And so I thought large reach, large audience, minimal impact, and have a big, a big change. So that's kind of the direction that I work. And you asked a very specific question. I'll tell you that. I told you a story about how I can answer anything. It's a question, but I'll give you a good answer. So, so we'll start with, at the ages of, you know, somewhere between 15 and 18, you know, that's when things get serious because kids have older friends and older friends have cars, and that's where you start seeing less adult supervision and all that kind of stuff. So there's four or five things that all parents really focus on and do. Some do it better than others. But the one thing is, it starts with positive communication practices, right? You try and engage really positive communications and another one is negative. You know, you try and avoid negative things. You try and, you know, think things through, be reasonable, have a good relationship. So you have those two types of communications. You could model behavior, you can monitor their behavior, and then you could set rules in your home, right? So those are, those are the basic elements of parenting. And you can set up an environment also in your home which cuts across, that allows you to communicate positively, it allows you to model, allows you to monitor, and it allows you to set a stage in your home for rules and so on. And you can invite your, you know, because we know peers are really important. You can invite peers into your home and have them that you can communicate with and you can model and you can monitor and so you can have this impact on your child, but you can have an impact on other children in the room who then can have their impact as a group, right? So you could do all those things. And most of us the studies we have are surrounding this idea that as parents you have a lot more control over than you think you do. Right. And so you want to exercise your best options. And so is it okay if I just share this one little tidbit and then we'll go back to which one works best because that's what we want.
- [17:58]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yes, of course.
- [17:59]
Professor Rob Taurisi
So a friend of mine, colleague of mine, said modest listserv and we try to provide support, help. And so this kid came home drunk and a parent wants to know what should I do? Because most parents at that point would, you know, let's say most, most parents at that point, kid comes home drugged when they expected them to be at their friend's house and everything to be somewhat normal. They're going to be a little reactive, right? They're going to be like, okay, we're going to have to talk, okay, we're going to do some rules, okay, you're not going to be joining for a while, okay, whatever, right. They're going to be reactive to this. So in essence their strategy is going to be directed at correcting the kids behavior with punishment and reinforcements of some nature. Right. But it's about the kids behavior that they're really focusing on something that's missing in the kids regulation that they're going to target. And that's, I think it's a reasonable thing. Most parents do that, right? Kid comes home drunk, they give them chores the next day, I'll teach you not to be drunk, I'll make you sweat it out, you know, whatever. And I said, well, I would say the parents should go into the bathroom and turn the light on and look in the mirror and say, what is it that I can do differently as a parent? And then I'll work on the kid because I have some say in this, right? And so they said, well, what would you say? And I'd say, well, I'd say what the data would say wouldn't be what I'd say the data show and then I would focus on the data. So, so for me I'm, I don't want to be, I don't, by the way, I don't want to get my email inbox filled up with everybody saying, oh, you're going to blame all the parents for all the problems in the world. Kids should take some responsibility for their actions. Absolute. Email someone else. I have a great email address to send.
- [19:44]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
No, well, also just to say I believe it's very heartening when you say that parents have some say. So if we don't Think of it as blame, but we just think we're all in this together. What can we do to better support the kids and everything. I actually think nobody's going to be mad because we want support. Some people will be mad, but not here.
- [20:06]
Professor Rob Taurisi
I have an email. It fills up, it's okay, so here's, here's the thing about this. So here's what the data show, right? The data show that monitoring is really complicated. That's not to say don't monitor your kids, but it's not as easy as like, oh, my child's going to walk across the street and in little and I go grab them and bring it back and say, oh, don't do that. Look, both ways. Monitoring, you know, there's all the we, there's a book and somewhere on my shelf or a contributed chapter for older kids, it changes throughout time. So when it's younger, it's about, you know, you have control. When it's a little older, and I'll use the 15 to 17 age group. High quality monitoring involves having your kids tell you what their plans are. Like, what's your plans? What are you gonna do on Friday? Okay. And then they tell you. And they're a cognitive person with social things that are emotional and they have a certain level of physical maturity. Right. So usually this doesn't happen all at the same time. Right. People grow bigger and they think differently, quicker than they socially differently, and they're emotionally different. And usually if you're good at one, you're lacking in another department and so on. So most oftentimes we see a relative we haven't seen a long time. And you're tall and they're broad and you look like a young adult. Then we start talking to them differently than if they're not as physically so. So their interactions are completely based upon not the data a lot of times. And so one of the things we could, we can think about is monitoring, which is checking in. And one of the things that we did, because the data showed it, is I always ask for plan B. Okay? That's plan A because you're telling me basically a 15 to 17 version, what you're going to do. So let's talk about what you do if that doesn't work and what you're doing. There is two things. One is you're monitoring, you're showing interest in what they want to do and their welfare, but you're also getting them to think about contingencies. So when they're in the situation where they could get in trouble if they're good at that and they've practiced contingencies, they can now step up and do something different, which is amazing how this works. So I was asked help produce a Dateline episode on impaired riding with drinking drivers. And the long and short of it is we had young kids and we had them make decisions about what's going on. It's a great episode, by the way, if you missed it. But what happened was all the kids got in the car with the drinking. You know, we had three sets of kids. I'm off stage with the parents. The parents are like, oh, we talked about this. They're not going to get in the car. This is going to happen. By the way, the drinking driver wasn't drunk. We just made as close. Yeah, but they got in car within a young person, even though they knew what they knew. And then, you know, toward the end of that big car drive around and then got lost and came back to the school and all the parents were there. And then we had to go, oh, I can't. I'm so sorry. Contingency, understand. One girl, one young lady walked to the car and just about getting. She said, I'm gonna just do my own thing. And she turned. Like, out of 16 kids, this one kid who thought in terms of plan Bs, did a plan B. And then as soon as she did a plan B, two of her friends said, yeah, I'm not going to go either. What a great impact that was, right? It's not really a study, but it really shows the idea about trying to develop. So when you're monitoring, if you're monitoring in a way that helps kids learn problem solving skills, you're not just monitoring and say, hey, what's your plan? What are you going to do? And things like that. But you're also teaching them to have a plan B. It's interesting. If you keep doing this, your kids are going to go, here's what our plan is. And if that doesn't work, we're going to do these things. They don't even wait for you to say, what's the plan B? Right. So a little older, a little different monitoring. Another element that monitoring for younger people is sometimes things happen that are out of their control and you know, they're friends and you know what's going on. Some of them are brighter than others. You love them nonetheless. But the bottom line is that can happen. And I could see a scenario where a young person doesn't want to leave their friend alone, and so they go along to protect and support. They're doing it for positive reasons, even though it might result in a bad. So it's always good to check with your kids. Right. Common element, like, are there going to be adults there? If so, can you leave a cell number for me so I can ask them if they need any help? You know how quickly plan A changes to plan B when you do that? Yes. So, and it's, it's not like, not like I don't trust you. I'm an adult and if my kids friends are going to go over someone else's house, I think it's cool for me to call, say, look, I understand bunch there. Is there anything that would help?
- [24:54]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
I think it's important for people to hear you say it's very reasonable to expect that your parent is going to say, if you. If they care and they're paying attention, I want to check in with the adult. That's to be.
- [25:05]
Professor Rob Taurisi
I'm not calling up to saying, hey, is everything out of control? And what the hell?
- [25:09]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
And what do you say to parents who are feeling like they hear pushback from teenagers that says, you know, no one else is doing that. Please don't embarrass me. Let's. Let's deliver some scenarios.
- [25:25]
Professor Rob Taurisi
That's great. Thank you. All right, so I can understand from the teen's perspective, don't do that. No one else is doing that. Don't embarrass me. If that was the first time and I just showed up on the spot and I'm just doing this like a blank slate, one dimension. Right. But if I'm that type of parent, since they're younger, that I keep on showing that element. The other piece too is that I talk to the other kids. You know, when my kids were younger, I still do this when I meet people, I say it differently. When they were younger, I'd say, hey, you know, this is how I get to know people. Ask me anything you want. And then here's what I get to do. I get to ask you questions too, because that's how we get to know each other. As you get older, you just say, you know, I'm probably going to ask you a couple of questions that are right. You know, I. Some people are uncomfortable with that, but that's how we get to know each other. You go first. Ask me anything, you know, and it's interesting. The early questions will be like, what music do you like? Why did you become a psychologist? Is it fun what you do, you know, to. I have this issue and I was wondering if you Could. So if you're the person that's always being the person who's willing to help and willing to do this, willing to your kids, instead of going, gosh, you're so embarrassed. And they'll say. They'll say things like, yeah, he's like.
- [26:44]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Totally.
- [26:45]
Professor Rob Taurisi
That's who he is. You know, and if you just own it and you say, yeah, I'm like that, you know, call me crazy. I'm the person that thinks it's normal to. To ask somebody if they need help if they're going to have 50 people at their house. That's what grownups do. If you want to be a grownup, be prepared. That's what we do. You should be asking, you need help. So I kind of look at it. This is like a professional training thing of rolling with resistance. And so if you get barriers, you get resistance. You know, to say, you know, you can have certain isms. I have an ism. And I isn't. Is. If there's no reason for you to be concerned about me asking, then you wouldn't be worried about me asking. If you have a concern, why don't you share with me what your concern is? And we could talk about that. Since most people are going to know me, certainly your friends, the people closest that matter to you, can you just be less dad sometimes? Go, I would be a full dad if I was less dad sometimes. Right. I'm not. And by the way, that's not a helicopter parenting thing. Thing. I'm not going here and saying I'm going to supervise. I'm saying, hey, I understand you're going to have some people over. Things are going to go on, you need help, but I want to know if they actually know that's what's going to happen.
- [27:59]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
For parents to understand their role is super helpful and that it matters.
- [28:05]
Professor Rob Taurisi
Yeah, well, so there's a lot of things parents do for positive reasons that the data show are not really working the way they want. Can I get past?
- [28:14]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Let's hear it.
- [28:16]
Professor Rob Taurisi
So monitoring communication is really important. We know that. But here's the thing. If I do 10 things right and I do one thing wrong, the one thing that I do wrong, the negative communication is going to create a barrier. So if we really have to be mindful of that and we're all going to do something wrong, so when it happens, you just own it. Yeah. So positive. So in the materials, you know, this study, we just did a lot of behavioral interventions. When we do an intervention, you know, our strategy for doing an intervention is we, we have an unknown dosage of what we need to deliver to have an impact. It's kind of like going to see your doctor and say, oh yeah, the sinus infection, can I get some medication? And you pills. And you say, well, how often should I take them and how many should I take? And I go, I don't know. That's kind of like most behavioral sides, right? You're in therapy, you don't have any sessions, you don't know what's going to happen. It's not a knock against the approach, it's just that it's harder to get that precise measurement with behavioral change. So we did something with the MAD intervention that we just did, which is we looked at the number of topic areas that parents covered from the materials when they talked to their kids. And we had high engaging parents, moderate and low engaging parents. And we found there's a shock. For the most high engaging parents, you get the strongest effects and for the moderate less and for the lower ones. But we were able to actually quantify and say if you talked about at least 17 topics that were covered in the materials, you got all the effects. If you covered less than it, you're not getting the effects. It's equivalent of, you know, you have a pretty bad headache and instead of taking two Tylenol, you take a quarter of a Tylenol. Well, guess what, your headache's not going to. Or if you have sinus infection, you're supposed to take two things, once in the morning, once at night, and you take just a few of them, you're not going to have the dose. And so we now know, and it's interesting because we know that in some areas we know that only 50% of parents are talking about this. 100% of the high engaging parents cover that. And so that could be a factor that's really driving why their communications may be different. But aside from that, so there's modeling, monitoring, communicating more positive plus negative. And then there's another one. And it's the rules that you have and you know, people, you know the. Well, the question I get asked the most is if there was one thing that you would recommend to parents to make a difference, what would it be? And when I started doing this work, this wouldn't have been the recommended thing. And actually up until probably 20, 17, 16, this might not have been the same. I would, I would discourage them from drinking until they're older. Like, you know, kids want to have their first drinks at parties, you know, 15, 16, 17, before they leave high School. And the data aren't really very good. Showing any benefit. In fact, I don't know of any benefit, to be honest. There's nothing that's been ever published. And that's not just by our lab. That's other people in the U.S. australia, Europe, where most of the signs come from. There's not one study that's been done that says if you let your kids have alcohol when you're this age, these are the benefits. And they're strong scientists. So. So in other words, we'll start from. There doesn't seem to be any benefit from a health stand. They're not more responsible about drinking later. They're not better drinkers later. Usually they are more harm. So early, early initiation alcohol, even in small doses, even at special occasions with tremendous levels of adult syndrome, they don't, it doesn't help. There's no, there's nothing that helps. However, on the opposite side of that, we can, you know, we have a stack of volumes of things that we can show there's harm. So for the. And this is controlling other aspects of parenting. So whether you're a good communicator, really good monitor, you do everything right. Will it, will it change that one thing? And the answer is no, not at all. Isn't that amazing? So you asked me before what surprised me that surprises me. I'd like to think as a parent, I could do all these other things. Great. Maybe mess up this one area and still end up good. And this is not the one area, you know, I thought, oh, this is bad. You know, like, this is a bad thing, right? If, if parents are doing this, this is harming their kids in some way. So I asked parents, you know, what are some of the reasons that you, you know, that you let your kids drink a lot when, you know, a holiday, special occasions. And by the way, had I not known this scientifically and one of my older kids came to me, like at Thanksgiving and said, hey, can I have a beer? Dad probably would have beals, you know. But the science tells me something slightly different. Parents who, you know, there are some parents that may not be, you know, doing it for all the positive reasons. Many parents are doing it because either they think their kids mature enough that they can handle this kind of experience, right? So they, they have a good relationship and feel like this isn't going to change. You know, this is gonna, this kid's capable, making this choice to have like a little while at dinner, you know, hung or little champagne. So they, they, they've identified something about Their kids, they think they're adult, like, and they could. This is not. So that's a positive. Right. They have a good relationship, things like that. Another one is they feel like it's going to create a stronger bond. In other words, the kids won't lie to them. You know, if they're going to go out, they're going to have a drink with their friends at a party, but they're not. They're going to keep in check and stuff by being honest. This promotes an honest, open relationship that's going to be beneficial. You know, I. I don't want to ever take away a good, strong, honest relationship between parents and kids. I mean, that would be hard. That'd be counterintuitive for everything I believe in. But I wonder how honest the kids are really, truly being, you know, given what we know about young adult behavior and drinking, whether they're truly saying, oh, yeah, I'm going to have a beer and that's all they have, or I'm going to do this and I'm not going to do any of that stuff. And then truly, I don't think that the kids are being truly dishonest about parents because most teenagers don't want their parents knowing every little everything. And as a parent, you don't really want to know that either. You want to. You want to have trust that they're going to make some good choices. Well, no, you have to, because spend a lot of time without you. So you have to feel that they're going to make some good choices. Some. But what we do see is that when younger people drink early, those people have more blackouts when they drink later in college. We now know that when you have more blackouts, you experience not only more consequences, but more severe consequences. We know that parents let their kids drink at an early age. Those kids are more likely to show signs and symptoms of an alcohol use disorder as young as 19 or 20. I mean, like I said, there's a lot of things that we can know about the. So if there was one thing that I would recommend, if you feel like, all right, I'm not going to ever be a good communicator. I'm not going to monitor. Well, but it doesn't matter because even when you have all those characteristics, we've done a study that way where we looked at parents and literally perfect, identical parents. They did everything right. They communicate, they model, they monitor, they set up the home environment. They were friends with them, volunteers. They did everything right. One group of parents let their kids drink in Small doses in controlled settings. And the other one said, you're too young, you have your whole life to drink. This is not the right time. The data just doesn't show the kids in the other group were safer than the other kids on all the dimensions.
- [36:01]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
I think we tend to tell ourselves whatever stories either fit with our narrative from when we were kids, you know, using the N of 1. And so it's important to hear what this really looks like. And I think it's also important to empower parents to have real conversations about this. So I do want to go into a little bit about the pushback that I hear from parents. I'll give you an example is one parent told me, well, if he doesn't get his kids, his teenagers, the alcohol, he has daughters, these girls, these beautiful girls are going to go try to get the alcohol themselves and they're going to, you know, show up outside of a liquor store and they're going to put themselves in harm's way because they're going to, you know, go ask some man to let them bat their eyelashes and go in and get them alcohol. Now, I hear that kind of pushback constantly from parents, like different worst case scenarios, or I hear pushback like, well, you know, if this is really fine wine, and I want them to understand that alcohol isn't something to get drunk with, it's something to enjoy in moderation, why not start earlier? I can tell you that I am very aligned with you, obviously, but I would love for parents to know that we know what the pushback is and to hear your response to it, because I think it's helpful. That gives parents a little bit more power to set the household rules and the expectations. And the last part of that pushback is often, you know, well, if they are going to make mistakes, and I've told them this rule that they're not allowed to have alcohol, how do I. How do I get around it? To which of course, you know, if we have these close, connected relationships, our kids know if they do make a mistake, it can still come to us. And that doesn't change that we're going to say, like, since I assume you're going to make a mistake, we're going to change the rule. But so I would love for you to address these very specific examples and any other ones that have come your way only to serve the parents as they're having these conversations in their heads and stressed out about how to navigate this time in adolescence.
- [38:13]
Professor Rob Taurisi
Those are real issues. I'll just start by saying, you know, if I had a child and I was concerned that they would do exactly the scenario laid out for me. They'd be like batting their eyes, you know, who knows what, Right? So, you know, to me and most practitioners, the evidence and the data are really, you know, when I shared what I'm sharing, this isn't my opinion. I'll share my opinions if you ask me what your opinion on something. But this is what the data show. So the data show that when parents have a communication with their kids about the rational reasons why they don't want their kids to drink, usually do those kids drink less, not more. They don't like the rule. And by the way, I don't like the rule of 70 miles an hour on the highway either. But when there's a 70 mile an hour sign, that kind of keeps me from going 90, you know, if there's 80, then I'm like, great.
- [39:09]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
That's a great way of putting it.
- [39:10]
Professor Rob Taurisi
The other way to think about this too is that we, you know, and this is one of the things that this is a little bit counterintuitive, which were asking parents to communicate with their kids. They were saying and set these, what seemed to be restrictive rules. The rules are based on data. And I'll give some other examples that I think are important. So we never had kid car seats. When I was. I'm old, car seats were mom's lap. How many people out there would really not throw the car seat out and take their kids and drive around? Not many.
- [39:49]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
No people.
- [39:51]
Professor Rob Taurisi
Yeah, it's probably the same people say, I don't want my daughter to have to buy alcohol from that strange guy.
- [39:57]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Right.
- [39:57]
Professor Rob Taurisi
Put their kids in a car seat. Because we learned that data told us by putting our kids in a car seat, they'd be safer. Here's another one. We used to have people smoke in restaurants. So they're finished with dinner. You just light up. We learned that secondhand smoke can cause cancer. So we change some rules. Well, here's what we have. We have some rules already in place to help our young kids be healthy. And the data actually support those rules. So the data don't show that if you discourage them and have a good reason for it, good reasons that are actually trying to help you be a better parent, that your kid's going to go, all right, well, I'm not going to listen to you anymore. I'm going to go buy alcohol instead. I'm going to get it. And if that's the case, if that really truly is the case, then my brief intervention is not going to. You have other issues that you have to resolve in terms of relationship issues, in terms of those types of things. If I had 16 weeks, four days a week, three hours a day, I could work on some of these issues. But If I have 15 minutes and I'm trying to give a parent, hey, look, I don't have all day and you don't have all day, here are some things that I can help you. This is what the data show. That's what I'm able to tell them. So getting back to the individual pushbacks and rollbacks, some of that's true. Some kids will, in fact, go and solicit alcohol outside stores, and other kids will drink less. The majority of the data show that kids drink less. So the parents. Right, but you said you're on that side of things. I'm on the side of data. If the data showed my kids that I said, hey, let's have drinks on holidays, I'd have drinks on holidays.
- [41:40]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Totally.
- [41:41]
Professor Rob Taurisi
The data.
- [41:42]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yeah.
- [41:42]
Professor Rob Taurisi
Show that. So the parents, the parents that are in that group, when we tell them, you know, you know, we say, you're doing everything that data shows, they're like, thank you. I'm going to have to tell my wife. I have to tell my husband, because they. Now we have this data. This is great. And by the way, we have countless citations we can give them about what the data actually show. So it empowers the parents to be able to say, hey, look, you know, I'm not asking you to, you know, like, basically go live in a desert without water. I'm actually trying to be a good parent here and help you understand. I mean, we have a real, like, people can, you know, complain about the medical system in our country. Country. I have yet to see a strong position by the American pediatrics that say, you need to give your kids alcohol every once in a while. It's a helpful thing. It develops better muscles and better brain power. Memory is going to be better. Emotional regulation is going to be so much better. It's a drug, and taken in doses in a developing brain, doesn't have a positive benefit.
- [42:47]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
But it's very helpful to. It's so unusual in data to keep getting the same answer. Right. Like, there's so many things.
- [42:58]
Professor Rob Taurisi
I did a. I did an interview for Time magazine on recent studies a while back, and the person was authoring an article for Time. She really wanted to have a reason and say, it's okay to let your kids drink in small doses.
- [43:11]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Right, right.
- [43:12]
Professor Rob Taurisi
So she went back and said, well, In Europe. I said, well, actually in Europe, there, if you look at, I have a graph that I have a talking as every country in Europe and then as the US right next to it. And it looks at the number of kids at the age of onset and it's all above the U.S. except for Turkey, because Turkey is a muscle country. All of them are higher. Right, okay. Then it shows the number of people that have lifetime alcohol problems and, well, higher than the US too. And so it's like Europe's not without problems. They've contacted me and said, can we do your parent interventions here? And it's been translating multiple languages. So it's not like Europe has a magic bullet all of a sudden.
- [43:51]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Yes, I'm glad you said that because I get that too. I, this is such a strange topic that I do get more pushback on than other topics. But the Europe argument comes up so often and I'm like, but that, that just look at what are we looking for if the outcome that we're looking for is lower rates of addiction.
- [44:10]
Professor Rob Taurisi
Remember, there's people that are going to drink at a young age and never get addicted.
- [44:14]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Right?
- [44:15]
Professor Rob Taurisi
That just because they start younger doesn't mean that's the key to addiction. But they will also experience more day level acute consequences of their drinking. So here's the thing about the young person's brain, right? Most younger people are going to make emotional based decisions, okay? They're going to what I want, how I feel, what makes me happy, Dopamine, which helps regulate. That's the, hey, pleasure. We're having a great time. I want more of that. All right, so that's where younger people and that happens kind of in the middle of people's brains, okay. It's kind of between your ears, back to your nose, right in the middle. Those are the emotional centers of your brain. It's the part that gets developed early. And that's really what drives a lot of decision making for young people. What they're willing to do, what they feel like doing, how do you feel about it? So on. Then there's the higher order, which is the bigger part of our brain, frontal cortex. And that's the rational, intentional, planned thinking behavior that comes in later. And I think the data show that basically that that's not fully developed at least into the mid to later 20s, right? So now you have these two centers, the emotional center and the cognitive center. And they're sort of fighting decision making. And younger people lean to how you feel. Older people are going to lean towards what's the best choice here. You know, rarely do you find an older person say, you know, I feel like that's the best house. I'll buy that one. They think about it, they plan it, they make some decisions, things happen. They don't go into marriages, go, oh, I feel like this one's better. They think about it, they plan it, they do these things, right? So, so these two centers and Larry Steinberg, professor at Temple, biobehavioral person, we were at the same meeting maybe eight to ten years ago, maybe longer, but we're at the same meeting. And all the biological and behavioral people were going first. And Larry gave a talk and basically said that we're spending so much money on all these things to teach kids problem solving, all this stuff. Their brains are going to make these decisions. That's where they are development. And everybody that came in, it was after that, you'd be like, he'd shredder. And I was near the end because I was doing behavioral and I thought, oh, he's going to shred me too. I'm in trouble. I just know my interventions work. You want to ask me what the biological methods are? Get more people that are cognitive. But still, at the end of the day, I thought about this and I, you know, I fortunately, I first have a mini panic attack and then I figure out something rational after that's over. What I do is I started my talk and said, before I go anywhere, I just know that ultimately that Larry's been basically saying that it's all about the emotional centers and change things. And so I said, so I'm going to start my talk off just with a story. Think about kids right now during the day, Monday through Thursday, from 8 o' clock till about 6 o' clock, you're holding doors open for people that saying please and thank you. They're sitting in their seats in their classrooms. You know, you don't see the kind of behavior you see on Friday, Saturday nights in classroom, you're seeing all this cognitively mature behavior. And then Friday, Saturday nights, when there aren't as many adults around, you see all the while drinking and all party and all that kind of stuff, right? And then Sunday they're back to saying, please, thank you. Holding doors open, doing these things. So it's not like these centers don't have connectivity, but the environment has a big say in that because it's not strong connectivity. And so the parent interventions that we're doing now, they're helping that connectivity. When they're in environments that are high risk, there's that little voice. That little voice is the connectivity between the emotion copying centers. It's the plan Bs. It's the things that they can do to solve the problem they have to solve or in those social situations where they're high risk. So you're not just teaching your kid values, you're helping exercise the connectivity so that you're not just making all. Because it's really good to see a mature kid turn around and say, yeah, I'm not going to do that and make that decision. So for us, the brain's really telling us that's what we have to work with. The brain's not going to be fully developed until later on, but we have to work with what we have now. So this idea of engaging them in problem solving. What's your plan? What's plan B? What happens here? Why is it not safe to drink? What are the reasons? Is it I just want to be mean and I want to take your party away, or is it that the data show that these are what works and this is what doesn't?
- [48:52]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Is there something that that's like a simple metaphor to understand that your brain, while it is developing, is going to be more robust and like stronger when it isn't given kind of the poison of alcohol at the time that it's growing? I'm not sure. I've always searched for this, but thinking about a flower that's blooming but it's like hasn't sprouted fully, is there a difference between the quality of the sunlight, water and soil that it's getting at that point versus once it's fully grown?
- [49:25]
Professor Rob Taurisi
That's a really good way to put it. I'm going to go back to something I said earlier. The studies that are out there don't show any positive benefit of it. It's a momentary benefit to a young person that drinks a small amount that loses some energy. Right? That's the benefit. It's a momentary benefit of having a small amount of alcohol and losing some inhibitions. That's what alcohol does at small doses. So for the younger person that wants to go to a party, have something to drink, those small amounts and have a momentary effect on losing inhibitions. Because social scenes are awkward, it's hard to talk to people. Everybody's having a difficult time with their emotional regulation, social skills than you are. So a drink in that situation could potentially help them lose some of the inhibitions they have. That's the positive benefit. It's very momentary. The negative sides of those are higher. And I Know that for younger people who are not thinking about the future quite as much, they want to not have to think about the negative signs of things. So perhaps one strategy is to share that this is the benefit. Momentary losing some inhibition. But here's how alcohol works and this could be very helpful for a younger person. One drink has that benefit. Two drinks, you've already lost the inhibition. So you're not gaining three drinks, you're just getting drunker. So it's not like one drink's good, two's better, two's good, three's better, three's good, four's better. So the right dose for most people would be a drinker. Right. If you're a big person, maybe two, you're most in American people. Yeah probably one. That's where you get all the benefit. From that point on, the benefit is lost. Unless of course you do want to blackout. And you know, I just want to share. When I talked about blackouts earlier, I probably should have mentioned blackouts aren't pass outs. They're not like the person's still awake. They're functioning but their brain has shifted resources so that they're no longer forming memories. The resources that shifted is partially creepy. Breathe and to have a heart rate. So those important survival the brain saying okay, we've detected something in our system here. You don't need a memory anymore, but you do need to keep and having your heart work. And so as the alcohol goes up your brain is saying shut off that part about memory. You don't need that.
- [51:59]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
You need to ask your question because that's so. I never thought about it that way. Wow.
- [52:05]
Professor Rob Taurisi
It's exactly what's happening that's so scary.
- [52:08]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
Especially because as a 50 year old woman, I'll tell you right now, when I have one glass of wine, apparently my brain has to work extra hard to just keep me functioning because I can't remember anything the next day. Well, it's really scary. It's very fun.
- [52:21]
Professor Rob Taurisi
The benefits of being a cheap date, you know, one drink. But I really am in all reality. So that's a different aspect. Black and black can't. You're making a lot of decisions of which your brains no longer really can people processing it. So again if you think about what the benefit of alcohol is again a low dose, you're losing some inhibition. Very low dose. If you're physically in pain, very low dose. However, when you look at those things relative to the other risks that are involved, you start, you know. And again for a younger person they might not always Think about, like, how is this going to affect my life? Like, it's not going to change me when I'm 21. Well, here I don't want to go into like data. I don't want to go into. I want to talk more natural. But here are some issues. We talk about 100 problems for the typical college students showing up on campus. So those students that started back in the fall who are now finishing their first year, they'd experienced a quarter of that. They're going to experience another quarter. 25 or so, another 20. That's the average person. Slightly heavier drinkers are going to experience twice that minute. Not, that's not even significantly different. Just a slightly average, slightly above average. 200. I didn't want to talk about this but you know, we have in this country many people. I can give you a number, but it changes, let's say 50%, 50% of our states. I think it's a little higher in most places. It's higher in cities than rural. Go on to college. Depending upon the estimates that you hear, it's somewhere between 1 in 5 to 1 in 4 women who are college students will have some form of unplanned, unintended unwanted sexual behavior, coercion. That's an entire class. So if you take all the women who are first year students or third year students or fourth year students, by the time they're finished, all of them experience that.
- [54:37]
Dr. Eliza Pressman
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