This is the ninth in a series of blogs examining the benefits of parental monitoring.
The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs reported a study that examined the effect of parental monitoring on gambling and alcohol use among youth.
Gambling and alcohol misuse are known to be widespread among youth, and may be part of a common problem behavior syndrome. These researchers hypothesized that misuse of alcohol might be connected with youth gambling more.
Scientists analyzed two studies of youth living in a city in western New York. Alcohol misuse among boys was associated with increasing gambling. Higher parental monitoring and lower misuse of alcohol were strongly connected with decreasing the rate of gambling among males.
For females, alcohol misuse was connected with more frequent gambling only when other factors such as high impulsiveness or low parental monitoring were also present.
In this study, gambling and alcohol tended to happen together. Youth who gambled more tended to consume more alcohol. When their parents monitored them more closely, there was a lower use of alcohol and gambling.
Do you know where your kids are? You need to know.
And, they need to know that you care how they spend their time even if they disagree with you about what they are doing and where they are going.