How does parental alcohol use cause anxiety in children?

Alcohol use refers to uncontrolled drinking, heavy drinking, or an inability to stop drinking or change drinking habits in some way, while being preoccupied with waiting for the next drink.

This has always been something of a problem in some families.

However, during the pandemic, alcohol consumption at home rose sharply. Parents were at home more in the daytime. Children were shut in the house more. And the result was that children saw their parents drinking, sometimes silly amounts compared to usual. On top of lockdown chaos and disrupted education, this seemed to make children even more anxious.

alcohol use2

How exactly do children become anxious about alcohol use in their parents? 

You'll know about the more obvious problems that alcohol use can cause. But the habit often has unforeseen side effects, and it’s three of these that I want to focus on.

The reason for my focus is that no parent would willingly be doing this to their child. So let’s have a look at them in turn so you can decide if any of them might be causing your child to be anxious.

1 Denying your child a secure attachment

When a parent drinks too much, it rocks your child’s sense of security. If you’re randomly laughing, comatose, sleepy, hysterical, sobbing or taking silly risks (whatever way the drink pushes you) by turn, you’re not available to your child. 

They don’t recognise this "you" as their usual reliable parent. The one they need to be consistently present while they grow up. 

They’re perhaps unsure whether you’ll answer them, sort something out, do the washing ready for school, be in your bed in the morning. Even notice they’re in the room with you.

That sort of uncertainty is crippling. Your child will be less willing or able to trust you or talk to you about worries. They become nervous around you, not sure which “you” they’ll find at any moment. And you don’t have to be an alcoholic to cause this. It happens with far lower drinking levels.

So, poorly judged alcohol intake can lead to anxiety and instability in your child about how to relate to you – when the truth is that what all children need is a constantly available and dependable attachment figure.

2 Confusion about what's normal

When a parent habitually has a dram before breakfast, opens a couple of bottles of wine before and during an evening meal and has a cupboard full of alcohol lined up for future use, your child will take this as normal. And then be confused when their friend’s home is not like this.

If your child sees one parent getting angry, even violent, or sick or silly when drunk, they’ll assume this is normal. Until they visit friends. 

If the house is full of shouting, yelling, smashing and unpredictability when one parent or relative has drunk too much alcohol, what will your child make of a quiet, peaceful, stable household when they visit a friend?

This confusion as to what's normal not only fuels their anxiety but also alters their brain structures. That’s because stress hormones are aroused and remain high. This is toxic to brain development.

And an unfortunate side effect is that resorting to alcohol as a solution to life's problems can pass itself on to your child as a normal coping mechanism – and eventually become an intergenerational issue. 

I know this from my work with groups of families where one family member was abusing a substance. When the families talked together, we heard how drinking too much had been a problem with a parent, a grandparent, and going back a few generations. Almost like it became set in the genes. An accepted kind of "normal".

3 Isolation from others

Where excessive drinking of alcohol is the norm in one parent – even when no one would call themselves an addict – your child starts to feel guilty, embarrassed, ashamed and angry when friends and the friends’ parents find out.

They then start to withdraw, to isolate themselves. Shun friendships. Say nothing about their family. Invite no one round. Lag behind in socialising. Become lonely and depressed. 

All at a time when your child should be moving away from parents and becoming capable and confident with a group of friends to play with. This leads to enormous anxiety.

In addition to this, the child often has to take on responsibilities for a parent who’s not able, for instance, to get up and prepare packed lunches (due to a hangover), do the washing (due to being disorganised), get younger ones ready for the school run (can’t cope with them). 

Child carers in general are always more isolated – but when it stems from a parent drinking too much alcohol, they'll often feel more anxious about it (for the reasons in points 1 and 2) than when a parent is ill or confined to a wheelchair or unable to parent 100% of the time for an unavoidable reason.

What can a parent do to help an anxious child where alcohol is a family issue?

I can’t offer help about the alcohol use because this is in the hands of the family.

But I’ve added this page into the causes section in case you thought alcohol use in your household was causing your child anxiety. In the light of the three issues I’ve outlined, you’ll know best how to proceed if you think it necessary. 

Any of the techniques in the strategies section and dotted around most other pages will help with the anxiety on a moment-by-moment basis – but the cause would need dealing with to solve it properly for your child.

In the meantime, I thought you might like to know about the 7 Cs we taught the children of the families taking part in the groups we ran  under the auspices of Action on Addiction. 

Children will always blame themselves if something that scares or worries them is happening in the family: illness, separation, divorce, death, and yes, alcohol use too.

So if someone in your family is causing your child to be anxious due to that person’s overuse of alcohol, you can help them cope better by making sure they understand these 7 Cs, so that they won’t go on blaming themselves:

7 Cs graphic for helping children not to feel guilty about parental alcohol use

NOTE: This poster is my design. The 7 Cs were developed by Jerry Moe, an Advisory Board Member of The National Association for Children of Addiction (NACOA).

QUICK CHECK: ALCOHOL USE ANXIETY

  • Excessive drinking by parents destabilises your child's sense of security, which affects trust and communication.
  • Habitual drinking in the family leads your child to think of this as the norm, which affects their perception of normal life.
  • Your child may feel shame if others find out about your drinking, and therefore choose isolation instead, which affects their social development.

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