How To Prepare For College?
Preparing your children for college means vesting them with the values and skills to face new challenges, make smart decisions, and avoid dangerous temptations. Among those temptations will be alcohol and other drugs.
Substance abuse is rampant and epidemic on college campuses. Each month, almost four million full-time college students—50 percent—binge drink, abuse prescription drugs, and/or abuse illegal drugs.
A significant segment of the college student population has a diagnosable substance-abuse problem.
- Less than 10 percent of the general population meets the medical diagnostic criteria for alcohol and/or drug abuse or dependence.
- In contrast, more than double that number (23 percent) of full-time college students meets the same clinical criteria.
Even if you have not consistently discussed the dangers of substance use in the past with your children, brief parent-teen interventions about your expectations and the dangers of substance use and abuse prior to your child entering college can help to form a baseline for appropriate and healthy behavior in college. Make sure you discuss the dangers of hazing with your child.
Colleges and their surrounding communities often create or enhance an environment that enables or even promotes substance abuse among students. Attending a college where the culture encourages substance abuse can threaten the health and future of your child.
It Starts in High School
Students who are drug and alcohol free during middle school and high school are much likelier to remain that way through college.
- Two-thirds of college students who drink alcohol or use illicit drugs began using them in high school. Almost one in ten began using in middle school.
- College students who began using drugs in middle school use them twice as frequently as students who began using them in high school (six days a week versus three days a week).
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To learn more about how to prepare your children for the temptations of college, read the book.
