a little help please

[LucyA]

Those of you who know me will know my nephew is living with me at the moment. For those of you who don't at a long story (aren't they all) but basically his dad is alcoholic and has been neglecting and abusing him when he's drunk.

I drink occasionally, normally and don't have a problem with alcohol addiction.
My nephew has been here a week now, and until last evening he hadn't seem anyone drink for the whole of that week. I had one glass of wine with dinner and his eyes never left the glass the whole time it had wine in it. I ended up pouring half the glass away in case I was upsetting him.

I don't want to hide the fact that I do have a glass of wine occasionally, and I would like him to see that people can drink responsibly and enjoy a glass every now and then.

Any advice please?

[best]

Depending upon his age, I would think just explaining to him what alcohol can do to most people would give him some insight as to why some can drink and why some shouldn't drink.

[peaceteach]

As someone who lived with an alcoholic, I developed major codie anxiety. During sobriety I would be fine, but the sight of a glass of alcohol in the hand of my A would flip me into the worst anxiety, just like a huge sock to my gut. The fear was immobilizing, and I almost couldn't breathe or think. Joe might need counseling, Lucy, to learn how to handle "triggers" that set off his fears. He's also young, and very black and white; to Joe, booze in the hand of anyone = danger, run, help me. You don't have to be Joe's counselor, just his loving aunt who supports him. I do think a quick, upfront chat, i.e., "I did notice that it made you feel anxious last night when I drank a glass of wine with dinner" and I'm sorry if this made you scared.

Could you find an experienced child psychologist in the addictions field? And what about alateen? If this is too much too soon for Joe right now, perhaps you could pick up some literature for yourself about young children of alcoholics and what emotions they may be experiencing, so that at least you are aware of possible triggers for Joe.

[LucyA]

I'm working on trying to find him some counselling, but this kind of thing is a bit difficult at the moment as I don't have parental responsibility yet, I'm trying to get the social worker (who hasn't been allocated to us yet!) to sort something for him as they don't need his Dads consent.

Peaceteach, thanks for your post, I've never lived with alcoholism so that's the kind of input I was looking for. One glass is no big deal to me and my own kids, but I did notice Joe didn't seem at ease with it. I think I'll leave the bottle in the fridge, just so it's not a secret, and lay off drinking anything while he's around for a while.

We did have a chat about it, but Joe said he was fine with it (I could see he wasn't) I guess he's so used to covering up for and excusing his dads drinking he thinks he should do the same for me.