Impact of Parents’ Alcoholism on Children Can Be Equally Damaging

Although life with a hard-core drug addict is uniquely torturous, children living with an alcoholic parent can also suffer deeply--and their numbers are far greater.

According to one federal survey, 22% of the nation’s children are being raised by alcoholics or problem drinkers.

Many of these children have parents who remain fairly functional--often for years. But alcoholism, like drug addiction, is a progressive disease that gets worse without treatment.

Take 12-year-old Trent Dick and his 10-year-old brother, Monte. Their mother, Stacy, is a recently recovered alcoholic who underwent rehabilitation this summer.

When Stacy began a seven-month drinking binge last December, Trent and Monte say, they would come home from school, knock on the door and get no answer. Trent would then look through the apartment door peephole. There, on the living room floor, would be his mother, a bottle of Jack Daniels at her side.

Once they managed to get inside, the boys would check their mother’s breathing and then, confident she was just drunk, help each other with their homework and cook dinner, usually a tortilla with cheese or a can of beans.

Before tucking his little brother into bed, Trent would drape a blanket over his passed-out mother.

“We were both fending for ourselves,” Trent says.

Trent remembers how he also had to keep a constant grip on the emergency brake in his mother’s car as she zoomed down residential streets at 80 mph. Last April, on one of her wild rides, the boys were so terrified that they got out of her car a mile from home.

Monte says he kept such harrowing experiences bottled up inside. “I didn’t want them to make fun of me because my mom’s an alcoholic.”

According to a federal survey, men are much more likely to be problem drinkers than women; Hispanics are more often heavy drinkers than whites or blacks.

Studies also show that either because of genetics or environmental factors, children of alcoholics are two to four times more likely than others to take up the bottle.

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Although most children of alcoholics appear to move into productive adulthood, 41% develop serious problems, one study found.

Groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous have launched weekly Alateen and Alatot sessions to help youngsters cope with and recover from alcohol-damaged childhoods.

One summer evening, a dozen 7- and 8-year-olds gather in Culver City for their Alatot meeting while their parents attend an Alcoholics Anonymous group nearby. Usually, the children recite what has made them happy lately, and what has made them sad.

“We have to convince them it is not their fault that their parents drink,” says counselor Peg Seegers, who runs the meeting.

The children begin by standing in a circle, holding hands.

James, a boy with dimples and no front teeth, reads from one of the group’s lessons. “We learn to cope with our feelings by sharing them with each other,” he says. The youngsters then sing: “If you are happy and you know it clap your hands!”

Nathan, 8, sums up the way many of the children here feel. “The worst is when you get yelled at or beaten, or when your mom or dad is indifferent.”