Kast Masken

Went to a parents evening yesterday in Dale. It was a special evening where the parents saw a bit of theatre about drugs and alcohol (mainly alcohol). Rowans class had seen the same thing the day before followed by some work shops. After the first 5min I realised thjat I had seen it before 2 years ago when Josie was in 10th class aargh... too late to escape and anyway I had cadged a lift so didn't have a car with me. 2 hours of the Norwegian version of how to teach young people about alcohol. The message was basicaly tell them they shouldn't drink. Hmmm, now I see why there is a problem.
There was some interesting statistics and some even more interesting conclusions.
1. Young people that begin to drink at an early age are more likely to develop an alcohol problem. Conclusion: If you stop young people drinking until they are 18 they are less likely to have a problem. Maybe it's not that simple?

2. 65% of teenagers had drunk alcohol before they were 18. 65% of parents think their kids don't drink. Conclusion: since these numbers are the same all parents who think their children don't drink must be wrong (I can't remember the exact figures here but this point about the numbers being about the same was made). Well what about the 35% of teenagers that actualy don't drink, quite a lot of the parents are right.

3. Drinking underage is like driving a car underage. Not exactly, try driving a car past a policeman at the age of 16 and see if you just get told to stop.
On the whole they did a good job and I'm sure the kids got something out of it, certainly better to talk about these things than to pretend nothing is happening. I just wished they hadn't been so Norskcentric. Maybe they could have looked at what happens in other countries and tried to learn from it.
Just booked my ticket to Paris in November, going to have a few days bouldering at Font. Feel quite motiovated to train at the moment so maybe i'll manage something I haven't done before. Eclipse 7c would be great. Have found a website where you can watch videos of the problems, here think I'll be spending a few hours logged into that site.