Did you know that roughly 6,000 people will die this year in direct correlation with underage drinking—a statistic that can be greatly reduced with parental intervention?

Underage drinking has emerged as the number one youth drug problem. By being an informed, caring parent you can strongly impact your teens decisions regarding alcohol. In fact, 74% of kids will turn to their parents for guidance on drinking. And research shows that as moms we are the number one influencers in dealing with this issue. For teens, alcohol is an illegal drug—and a zero tolerance policy is the best policy to have as a parent.

Yesterday, MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) launched The Power of Parents: It’s Your Influence (www.thepowerofparents.org). This program has been designed to help provide us as parents with key tips, information, and tools to help us at home reach our teens and communicate the real life danger of underage alcohol use.

I live in a rural area where underage drinking and driving is pretty common, as drinking and driving is period. You not only have to worry about your family, but each and ever car that passes you. It’s ridiculous! I wish more parents would talk to their children about staying sober and being safe on the road… and about texting and driving, or even playing with the radio stations while driving. All it takes is a second to loose control of a vehicle and crash.

This is a picture I took on an accident scene a couple weeks ago, it had been raining and one vehicle hit a slick spot in the road, crossed the center line and hit the other vehicle head on…

Luckily both occupants were wearing their seat belts and survived, but if either had been impaired in any way, it could have been much worse.

My hope is that everyone that visits The Power of Parents: It’s Your Influence, will share it with another person, and that parents will learn how to talk to their children about being safe behind the wheel.

More Resources…

• MADD Blog: http://maddparents.blogspot.com/
• Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/maddparents
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/MADDs-Power-of-Parents-Its-your-influence/131838435851
• Safety Quiz: http://www.madd.org/parents/highschool-drinking2.html
• Support 21 Survey: http://support.madd.org/support21

I wrote this post while participating in a blog campaign by Mom Central on behalf of MADD.  A donation was made to MADD in my name to thank me for taking the time to participate.