Effects on children and families

Effects on children

Considering the effects of alcohol misuse on family life and the reaction of individual parents it should not be surprising that parental alcohol misuse often has a big impact on children. The key impacts are:

parental and family arguments and rows
these rows becoming more aggressive and violent in expression and nature
both parents often seeming preoccupied with the drinking – either they themselves are thinking about getting a drink, being drunk or withdrawing whilst coping with a hangover or else they are caught up with the behaviour of the drinker. Children experience a loss of parental availability
children feeling lonely, isolated
children often tending to see parental problems as in some way their fault and feel guilty
children responding by developing problems of their own.

The sort of problems children might develop include:

Anti-social behaviour, or conduct disorder
More aggressive behaviour (although some children will become quieter and more withdrawn), more delinquency, more temper tantrums, more truancy, more hyperactivity, and so forth.

School environment
More problems at school, including learning difficulties, slow reading, low concentration, poor school performance. Again, conduct disorders may show themselves in the school setting via aggression or truancy.

Emotional problems
Including a wide range of psychosomatic problems, ranging from asthma to bed-wetting. They also include negative attitudes to their parents, negative attitudes to themselves with high levels of self-blame and withdrawal, crying and depression.

These problems are in a sense a way of coping. By developing problems children are asking for attention:

they are hoping that their problems will make their parents focus on them, and therefore focus less on the drinking
they are hoping that others outside the family will notice and come and rescue them
or alternatively, others might come and put the family right again.

The children react in these ways because they have certain needs which are not being met:

love, affection, nurturing
a clear structure within which they can learn the rules about life
care and control.

Living in a family where someone has a drinking problem often means that the child does not get these needs met, at least not in a consistent and reliable way.