The Alcohol Education Trust - Parent Newsletter

Summer Term, May 2018, Ed 30

For many of us it’s a stressful time as parents with exam season well and truly upon us, let alone for our children. Whether keeping them focused, ensuring they take regular breaks and eat well, our role as parents and carers is so important – that may include cutting their use of social media or social lives right back of course, and then managing the parties and festivals that may follow GCSE’s and A levels in particular.  

Managing exam stress

There are some useful sites to help parents manage exam stress and you may like to look at advice given by Family Lives: https://www.familylives.org.uk/advice/teenagers/school-learning/exam-stress/ and a link to share with older teenagers and students that may help via: http://www.studentminds.org.uk/examstress.html

Keeping teens safe at summer parties

For us as parents as the weather improves, we may be planning BBQ’s and summer parties. Do think about interesting hydrating drinks, especially if it’s a day time do, they can last for many hours, so if any of your friends are planning to drive, or just so you don’t drink too much, make sure you’ve got some delicious low/ alcohol free or soft drinks on offer. There are some delicious alcohol free beers and ciders available now and there are some great refreshing soft drink recipes here: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/top-10-non-alcoholic-drinks and from Jamie Oliver here: https://www.jamieoliver.com/news-and-features/features/how-to-make-incredible-summer-soft-drinks/  

As you relax in the sun, don’t forget to keep an eye on alcoholic drinks if there are youngsters around too, it might just be a little too tempting to sneak one or two when you’re not looking while you’re chatting with your friends. When asking where teenagers get alcohol from, it’s overwhelmingly from you – either with your permission, or taken from home without you knowing, so watch out!

Top tips for house parties

If your teenager is planning a post GCSE party, you may find our tips on the AET website here useful.  Our key recommendations include:

Drink spiking

We’ve also created a new  information sheet on drink spiking http://alcoholeducationtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/drink_spiking_sheet.pdf  as well as information online that you may find helpful. We’ll talk about festivals in the next edition after half term.

Wellbeing Awards success!

We were thrilled last month to win an award for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Wellbeing’ from the Wellbeing Awards 2018. That is what all our work is about – helping people and children lead healthier happier lives!

Can you help?

Remember we’d love to hear from you if you’d like to help support our work in any way – are you planning to run a marathon, half marathon, 10k? Please contact us if you’d like to raise money for us – it costs us £90 to support a school with our award winning book of resources and activities and £150 to host a training session – so the funds you raise will go a long way to help ensure children learn to stay safe around alcohol!