What Do You Tell The Kids?

It'

s a talk with my daughter that I don't look forward to. My two-year-old will be a teen, and I'll be 80 or 90, at least in her eyes, dressed in fashions from a previous century and using slang from TV shows she never watched. We'll be on the porch or at the kitchen table, the atmosphere outwardly casual yet tense, when I'll mention, out of the blue, that I once drank too much and that it taught me some things I'd like to share with her. She'll lift her lovely, clear eyes and ask me, "What things?" At which point, I'll choke and wish I hadn't started this. Do I owe her a full confession, complete with mugshots, or just an outline? Perhaps I'll just say this: "Don't drink, you hear? I don't want you to drink." My hope is that she'll smile and say, "I won't, Dad," the way I would have done at her age, if I'd been asked to. Will she be lying? Not my little girl.

We recovering alcoholics have a saying: "Please take my advice--I never use it." There's a fatalistic wisdom here. We problem drinkers who've put away the bottle know well how little others' warnings affected us (except, perhaps, to make us more defiant) and are doubtful about the impact of our own words. We also know, sadly, that alcohol addiction has a genetic component and runs in families, placing our children at special risk and mandating that dread discussion on the porch. If only the talk could be fobbed off on a doctor (a Mormon doctor, ideally) or someone else with the authority to speak. We former drinkers believe we have no moral authority--though unlike most parents, we know that we don't. We're walking worst-case scenarios.

But we can at least be honest. When it comes to conditioning children's behavior with words, maybe that's the most a parent can wish for: to preserve his own integrity and pray that his child is duly impressed. If I didn't happen to know that horror stories breed at least as much curiosity as fear, and if I had more faith in bold commandments issued in the voice of Charlton Heston, I could imagine having that porch talk once, or maybe twice, and being done with it. Then I'd move directly to the punishment phase: "Is that beer on your breath, my darling? No car keys. Ever!" Unfortunately, I doubt that it will go like this. If my daughter is anything like I was, the talk will have intermissions, pauses, breaks, and will need to be resumed and modified, according to circumstances, every few months or so. The outright ban--my initial negotiating position--may even break down into specific pleadings: No drinking while driving. No drinking with older boys. What an awful mess it's going to be.

In the meantime, I'll try to teach her by my own abstinent example and take solace in not having lied about my own youth--which surely she'll have heard about by then (possibly from her mother or her grandma). If I'd been a less spectacular drinker, I might be able to rewrite my past, but I'm afraid that, like the President, I already blew that gambit. All that's left is to be forthright, more or less, and steel myself against charges of hypocrisy by remembering that my warnings come from love, not a desire to look better than I am. I touched a hot stove when I was little, too, but that doesn't mean I can't tell my daughter not to.

According to the memorable, short prayer at the heart of the Twelve-Step treatment program, it's folly to seek to control the uncontrollable. The behavior of others, by definition, is uncontrollable, and all we can hope to govern is ourselves. What a cop-out, huh? Wouldn't it be nobler by far to fight the good fight with all the weapons available: a firm bass voice, a wagging finger, the Bible? After all, this teen-drinking business is serious. Just because I survived my 12-pack road trips and puke-a-thon proms doesn't mean my daughter will. That scares me. But parenthood in general scares me. Something else scares me too: the idea that if I skip the porch talk, one day, after catching my daughter in her first big spree, I'll have to confront her about lying to me about liquor while knowing inside that I've been lying about it too.

I want a clear conscience when I take her car keys.