If we want our kids to be responsible about drink, we must lead by example

MY wife and I went to a funeral last week.

It was the funeral of a remarkable man, a man with a rare combination of gifts. Frank Koop was his name, and he was married to my sister.

Frank was a teacher, a man with a fine intellect, remembered with affection by hundreds of students. He was always curious, always learning, a great listener. But he was also an outdoorsman, a man who loved the water and boats. He fished and hunted, and at night he loved to play music.

Many years ago he cooked moose and baked potatoes for Frieda and my sister and me over an open fire, deep in the woods near Fort St John, seven hundred miles north of Vancouver. We’ve never forgotten the taste of that moose — one of the best meals we ever had in our lives — and we’ve never forgotten the last words Frank said that night before we all went to sleep in our sleeping bags. “If the bears show up, run!”

Everyone who knew Frank loved him. When he died he was surrounded by that love, and it showed throughout the several days of his funeral. But this was a different funeral in many ways, and in one respect it was utterly unique in my experience.

Although he was not religious, Frank had been raised a Mennonite in northern Canada. All of his children (now grown men with their own families) are Mennonite still. Mennonites are close to Baptists. Their religion was born in persecution, and perhaps as a result of that they form very close and tight-knit communities wherever they live. Their approach to life is simple, old-fashioned, and modest. They are astonishingly close to their children.

In the time I was with them, I met happy children, mature and intelligent young people, parented by men and women who are true to a set of values. Each night we were there the women worked together to prepare food. Families sang together, discussed everything openly, and had fun being with each other.

It was the same at the funeral. Frank was mourned and honoured in equal measure, with stories, prayers and songs. His whole family took a part, and my feeling, when it was over, was that Frank would have really enjoyed it.

And the entire event involved no alcohol. Mennonites frown on drink, and guess what? They don’t seem to need it to express themselves, or to pay tribute to their loved ones.

I come from a culture (you may be familiar with it) where it isn’t possible to say goodbye to a loved one without a great deal of alcohol being consumed. In our little corner of the world, of course, no significant event can ever happen without drink. No Christening, no wedding, no adult birthday, no funeral.

But for four or five days I enjoyed the company of a wonderful family, from northern Canadian cowboys to top university scientists, who could manage grief, pay tribute, spend hours with each other telling stories about their dad, all without the aid of a drink. It would never happen here, would it?

And then I came home, and the controversy of the week was all about Roísín Shortall. As Minister with responsibility for primary healthcare, she had given an interview to the Irish Times in which she had said that parents who allow their teenage children to consume alcohol at home in a bid to foster responsible drinking may be contributing to substance abuse among young people.

She added that she had noted an ambivalence among parents when it came to their children drinking at home. While she accepted that many who allowed the practice did so with the best intentions, she suggested they may be doing more harm than good. And she concluded, “There is this relatively new idea that if young people are drinking at home then it is OK, because at least they are not out taking drugs. That needs to be challenged.”

And all hell broke loose. I couldn’t turn on the radio for several days last week without hearing discussion about, of all things, the nanny state. Shortall was accused of attacking parents — every parent in Ireland, as far as I could tell. Isn’t it about bloody time, I heard one commentator say, that we told the Government to butt out of what happens in our homes and our kitchens. Even someone from the National Parents Council weighed in, to let us all know that a beer or a glass of wine drunk under the careful supervision of a parent did far more good that bad.

We really need to get a grip. Shortall did her job, and did us all a favour, by getting a debate going about this subject. By not pulling her punches she forced thousands of thoughtful parents (as opposed to headline-hunting commentators) to pause for a moment and think about the issue.

When Shortall talked about ambivalence, she could have been referring to me. And I’m guessing I’m not alone. I’ll usually be among the first up to the bar at the reception after the funeral, and I love nothing more than when the sing-song starts. I’ve never been in a position to lecture my own children about drinking, even though that’s never stopped me worrying about them. (Lest my children beat me about the head, I should add that they are all responsible about drink. I just can’t claim they got it from me.)

The single most important thing any parent can do is to (forgive the jargon) model behaviour. If you want your kids to grow up as readers, you read to them. If you want them to grow up with love in their hearts, you show them what it means. We all follow our parents’ lead — and we do what they do, not so much what they say.

That’s why, for instance, issues like domestic violence can jump from generation to generation.

At one level it doesn’t make sense that if you grow up in fear, because your dad hit the people around him, you’re just as likely to use violence as a weapon when you’re an adult. But that’s a reality — we all tend to repeat the behaviour our parents demonstrated as normal, no matter how much we might have hated it at the time.

So here’s the brutal truth. If we want our kids to be responsible about drink, we have to be responsible too. That’s what Roísín Shortall was saying, and she couldn’t have been more right. A government minister who says that kind of thing isn’t promoting the nanny state, she’s just speaking what we might see as unpalatable truths. It’s called leadership.

A Mennonite family, as warm and close as any family I’ve ever met, taught me that different responses are possible. We can mourn and celebrate, enjoy and grieve, without the need to get tanked while we’re doing it. It was a bit of a shock to my system, sure.

But you know something? Every moment of that funeral meant a lot to everyone involved. And none of us missed the drink.