Prom time is best time to be real parent

Prom these days isn’t the same as it was 30 or more years ago, when it was generally sufficient to sidle up to a prospective date at her locker and ask her out. If you were already dating, it was simply understood.

These days, more guys feel compelled to make elaborate “promposals,” or perhaps that’s the expectation, creating grand gestures and public displays of near betrothal before gaining assent from that prospective date.

What follows are untold hundreds of dollars spent on accouterment necessary these days to make the evening complete.

So why, after all this angst and investment, would you want to risk killing your date or yourself by bringing booze or drugs along for the ride?

We know teenagers feel they’re invincible. We were teens once, too. Kids: Learn from the mistakes your parents made. Don’t replicate them.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving knows that prom season is right around the corner. The organization last Saturday sponsored the nationwide Power Talk 21 day in which parents were asked to and guided in how to talk to their kids about the perils of alcohol use. If you haven’t had that talk yet, now is the time.

After all, MADD says that 74 percent of kids say their parents are the leading influence on their decisions about drinking.

What a powerful statistic. Parents: Take advantage of it.

But it’s a double-edged sword.

A December report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration suggests that 16- and 17-year-olds are far more likely to drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs if they live with a parent who does so.

SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health provides some startling statistics on where teenagers get their alcohol. More teens — 26 percent — get their alcohol from a parent or family member than they do from either someone unrelated to them who is older than 21 (25 percent) or someone unrelated who is younger than 21 (22 percent.)

Now, parents, if you think you’re doing your kid and their friends a favor by providing them liquor for an after-prom party and locking them in your basement to enjoy it, think again.

The more they drink, and the more accepting parents are of underage drinking, studies suggest, the more likely they are to get behind the wheel drunk.

It’s not easy to be a parent, we know.

But in heady times like prom and graduation season when kids are trying to act more adult than they usually do, they don’t need another friend. They need a parent.

SAMHSA has created an online tool that helps parents talk with their kids about the dangers of underage drinking. Find it at underagedrinking.samhsa.gov/. MADD has its own tips on starting that difficult conversation. You can find it at madd.org/powertalk21.