Here's A Resolution Every Parent Can Keep: Talk To Your Kids About Responsible Drinking

Keeping New Year’s resolutions is basically impossible (almost as impossible as staying up till midnight on New Year’s Eve). Every year, I resolve to exercise. And I do! I exercise! For three days…and then my life gets crazy or the kids get sick or the laundry gets too overwhelming, and my workout resolution dies before I’ve even discovered I still have abs. And I know I’m not alone in this. It’s hard enough to keep resolutions before you’re a parent, but once you have kids…forgetaboutit. Parenting is so intense, so overwhelming, that it can be hard to find time for ourselves.

So this year, I’m making a new kind of resolution — one I can actually keep. I’m resolving to talk to my kids about responsible alcohol consumption. Research shows that parents have the biggest influence on their kid’s decision to drink — or not drink. Yes, believe it or not we have influence. Kids might act like they don’t listen to a word we say, but they are listening. And talking to your kids, as early as 6 years old, about making smart decisions about alcohol is the best way to prevent them from engaging in underage drinking. All it takes is a conversation, or 10, because really it’s an ongoing dialogue.

Join me, Responsibility.org, and a host of bloggers, and resolve to talk to your kids about alcohol. It’s a resolution we can all keep. Exercise be damned.

Now enjoy my look back at a year in parenting. If your year was anything like mine, you did a lot of laundry, cleaned a lot of messes, and ended the week with a (responsible) glass of wine. So cheers! Here’s hoping you stay up past 9 p.m. this New Year’s Eve.