Ages 15-18

Alcohol and Parties

Assume they'll be somewhere with alcohol. Plan for that, not for the version you'd prefer.

The realistic goal is a teenager who gets home safe and calls you when things go wrong. Everything here is designed to protect that.

Four questions before they leave

Ask the same ones every time until it's routine and unremarkable. It takes thirty seconds and it changes the odds.

This is the single most important rule you will set as a parent of a teenager. Establish it long before they need it.

Any hour, anywhere, no questions that night.
Never get in a car with a driver who's been drinking or using.
There is no punishment for calling — that's the whole deal, and you have to honour it.

Give concrete instructions rather than general warnings. Concrete instructions are what they can actually use at 11pm.

Never leave a drink unattended; open your own.
Stay with the people you arrived with, and leave with them.
Learn the signs of alcohol poisoning and call an ambulance rather than letting someone "sleep it off."
Location sharing stays on when they're out.

Safety tonight, conversation tomorrow. Nothing useful is said to a drunk sixteen-year-old at 1am.

What to say

Setting the pickup deal

Any time, any place, any state — you call and I come. I won't shout that night and I won't ground you for calling. That's a promise.

Before a party

Whose house, is a parent home, who's bringing you back, and what time? Same four questions.

The morning after

Right. Tell me what happened last night. I'm not angry that you drank — I want to know if you were safe.

Where parents get burned

Breaking the no-questions promise once, which permanently kills it.
Hosting and supplying alcohol to other people's teenagers, which is a legal problem as well as a trust one.
Pretending it isn't happening and giving them no plan at all.

When to loosen up: Drinking alone, drinking to cope, blackouts or missing school afterwards are signals for professional help, not stricter curfews.

Tell Beacon what's actually happening in your house and it'll tell you which of these rules to hold and which one to drop.

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