Alcoholic teens are often youngest siblings: study

Research shows that children hospitalized with acute alcohol poisoning are often the youngest in their families.

Pediatrician Loes de Veld examined anonymous data of 7,000 adolescents hospitalized for acute alcohol poisoning between 2010 and 2017 and found that most were the youngest siblings in their families. .

The reason for this may be that parents pay more attention to what their first and second children are doing and tend to relax the rules for the youngest, says education expert Marina Huang. Del Val said. Nu.nl.

Under 18 forbidden You can’t buy alcohol or be served alcoholic beverages at bars, van der Wal said, but “when a child says, ‘But he can have a drink, what about me?'” It’s hard for parents to say no when they do.

But parents need to be aware of the damage alcohol can do to the developing teen’s brain. We find that children who are allowed to drink by their parents use other drugs sooner and smoke more often.

They also go to the hospital more often. De Veld’s research found that her children under the age of 15 with acute alcoholism had their first alcoholic drink long before that. Prevention is key, De Veld said. “Stopping drinking before you turn 18 is a step in the right direction.”