Saturday, July 31, 2010

“Before college, prepare kids for the party scene” plus 1 more

“Before college, prepare kids for the party scene” plus 1 more

Before college, prepare kids for the party scene

Posted: 30 Jul 2010 10:11 PM PDT

I'm not gonna lie. During the summers between high school graduation and going off to college, it crossed my mind to actually encourage my girls to practice drinking.

I didn't want either of them to become "that girl" who goes to her first college party and drinks herself into a stupor or gets assaulted just because she finally has new-found freedom.

Of course, that was silly. My girls assured me no practice was needed. And really I knew that they were responsible and armed with knowledge to make safe choices.

A recent study by a nationally recognized alcohol researcher noted that teens tend to increase alcohol consumption the summer before entering college and during the first semester of their freshman year.

According to University of Rhode Island psychology professor Mark Wood, now is the time for us parents "to monitor our children, know where they are, whom they are with and what they are doing. Numerous studies have shown that this type of monitoring in combination with an emotionally supportive parenting style is associated with less drinking and alcohol-related problems".

Wood notes that most American teenagers begin drinking around age 15 -- so much for worrying about their need to practice -- so conversations concerning alcohol should take place throughout high school.

If we need motivation to initiate these talks, we need only look at the sobering statistics. A report from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism presented statistics indicating that drinking by college students contributed to approximately 1,700 deaths, 599,000 injuries and 97,000 cases of sexual assault or date rape per year.

Educating our kids about the dangers of drinking should include explanations about the effects of alcohol on the body and mind. What can begin as a feeling of happiness and elation can soon evolve into loss of inhibitions and memory, impaired decision-making skills and increased aggressiveness and restlessness. These psychological effects may be accompanied by loss of physical control, balance, blurred vision and slurred speech.

Too much alcohol can lead to poisoning. Because alcohol depresses the nerves that control involuntary actions (breathing, gag reflex) a person could lose consciousness and eventually stop breathing. Even if a person has passed out, his blood alcohol concentration may continue to rise, because alcohol continues to circulate through the bloodstream.

One who appears to be sleeping and cannot be roused could be in extreme danger. Your kids should know to look for mental confusion, stupor, vomiting, slow irregular breaths, bluish skin or paleness. If alcohol poisoning is suspected, they should call 911 immediately.

Make it a point to maintain an open, honest dialogue with your kids with mom's Rx for the week:

Spend the rest of the summer reminding your child of the values, attitudes and expectations that you have been promoting all along. If they have internalized these values, hopefully they will make good choices.

Stay involved by speaking to them frequently and keeping up on their activities. In this age of the cellphone, or, as I call it, the infinite umbilical cord, we can be in touch at any time.

For advice on how to stay involved during freshman year, links to alcohol policies at colleges throughout the country, and advice on dealing with alcohol-related crises, go to www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov.

This column should not be substituted for medical advice. Contact Lynda Shrager at Lshrager@otherwiseheathy.com

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Alan S. Chartock: They can get it wrong

Posted: 31 Jul 2010 11:43 AM PDT

By Alan S. Chartock
The Record

The more we watch these powerful folks in politics, the clearer it is that many of their actions can be explained by "rationalization," the term we all learned back in our basic Psychology 101 course. For example, when Charlie Rangel is accused of not paying his taxes after having written much of the tax code, or Eliot Spitzer consorts with prostitutes after he wrote and enforced many of the laws against "Johns," we ask ourselves how they could be so stupid. Or when former Republican Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno skirts the ethical line by selling a nearly worthless nag as a way of having a business associate funnel money to him, we shake our heads and wonder what he could have been thinking.

The answer, I am convinced, is that they truly do not believe they are doing anything wrong. Any lie detector read-out would indicate they were telling the truth when they insisted they had done nothing wrong. Some have described this self-deception phenomenon as a sense of entitlement. Some suggest that when you get very powerful you think you are owed by the rest of society. I've seen this kind of arrogance in politicians up close and personal, time and again.

Speaker Sheldon Silver says that his house passed a very strong ethics bill which, for some reason, was vetoed by Governor Paterson. The bill was vetoed because it had enough loopholes to drive a semi-truck through. The people deserve to know where every penny a legislator raises comes from. Shelly Silver and his colleagues don't like that. If that had been part of the ethics bill, the governor would have signed it.

The very powerful seem to act as though the laws are for other people. I know many of these people fairly well and, more often than not, I really like them. They are real characters. Sometimes they spring at you like a Damon Runyon character from Guys and Dolls. When you speak to them, they are just like us. They have foibles. They are human. They have a sense of humor. They have good and not so good sides to them. In some case, they have flirted with legal prohibitions and enter into a state of denial. In others, they fool themselves on policy matters.

These days it is fashionable in some reform quarters to speak of Shelly Silver, the top guy in the state Assembly, as if he is the devil himself. His former chief of staff, Pat Lynch, is now one of the most important lobbyists in Albany. The word on the street is that if you want something from Shelly, you hire Pat Lynch, his former, most trusted aid. In Albany, true or not, perception is everything. Perception gets lobbyists hired.

When I recently asked Shelly whether lobbyists in Albany are too powerful, he answered that he can show us good laws like "Leandra's Law" which was pushed by citizen lobbyists and makes it a felony to drive intoxicated with children in your car. Hey, come on now, Shelly, there is a huge difference between the big boys and girls who push the laws and funnel money to the legislators for their election campaigns and the few good government types who occasionally get a win to make the Legislature smell good.

When I asked the Speaker about the law that the Governor and the Senate are pushing that would "empower" SUNY, he seemed dead set against it. He says, and he is again right, that every time you raise tuition, a young person will be denied the American dream. Under the "Empowerment Act," SUNY schools and presumably City University schools will be given the power to raise tuition for their schools and will, presumably, be allowed to keep the increase to run their schools.

The problem is that we are in really tough times. The State University has been slashed terribly. To keep the University viable it makes sense to allow the schools to raise tuition otherwise the great SUNY and CUNY systems are truly doomed. The Speaker has the power to make sure that those with the least are given tuition assistance (TAP) funds.

All this proves that both politically and substantively, our public officials are human and can get it wrong.

Alan S. Chartock is a political commentator and president and CEO of WAMC. His column runs on Saturdays.

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