When a Co-Parent’s Drinking Affects Your Child:
Understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
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Soberlink
A Shared Commitment to Child Safety, Accountability, and Prevention
About Soberlink
Soberlink’s comprehensive system offers an innovative solution for alcohol monitoring, combining technology and convenience to support individuals in their journey toward accountability and trust rebuilding.
American SPCC is proud to partner with Soberlink to expand evidence-informed resources that support child safety, accountability, and healthier family environments.
Your child’s sense of safety starts at home, so when a parent’s drinking disrupts that, your kids can be greatly impacted in ways you cannot immediately see. This guide draws on research about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) to help you understand how alcohol misuse can affect your child, and what you can do about it.
What Are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)?
ACEs are potentially traumatic events or conditions kids experience before age 18. Abuse, neglect, and witnessing violence all count. So does growing up in a household affected by substance use, mental health struggles, or parental separation. A parent’s alcohol use disorder is one of these experiences, and it often shows up alongside others. That’s why recognizing and monitoring the signs of parental alcohol misuse is so important.
How Common Is This?
You’re not alone in this. More parents deal with it than you’d think:
- About 64% of U.S. adults experienced at least one ACE before age 18, and more than 1 in 6 experienced four or more.
- Roughly 1 in 10 kids live with a parent who had an alcohol use disorder in the past year.
- Alcohol is the substance adults misuse most, more than four times as often as any other drug.
How This Shows Up for Kids
When a parent misuses alcohol, kids often live with what researchers call “toxic stress”: their body’s stress response stays switched on for too long. That takes a toll. It can make it harder for a child to learn, manage emotions, and feel secure. Every kid shows it differently, but watch for:
- More anxiety or worry
- Trouble sleeping or eating differently than usual
- Grades slipping or trouble focusing
- Behavior that doesn’t seem like them
Here’s the pattern research keeps finding: the more adversity a child faces, the bigger the potential impact on their health down the road, including higher risks for depression and chronic illness later in life. But that pattern runs both directions. Cut down a child’s exposure and boost their support, and their outcomes improve too.
Repair Matters More Than Punishment
You want to protect your child from a parent’s drinking, and you should. Safety comes first, always. But research also shows something else: losing a relationship with a parent is itself an adverse experience for a child, one with its own long term effects. That’s why the goal for most families isn’t to end the relationship. It’s to make it safer. Keeping the connection alive while protecting your child gives them the best shot at a stable, healthy outcome.
How Alcohol Monitoring Tools Can Help
Alcohol monitoring tools like Soberlink give families an objective way to confirm sobriety during parenting time. Soberlink is a portable, professional grade breathalyzer that sends your co-parents alcohol breath test results to you. It replaces tension and guesswork with results that everyone involved can trust.
The device is discreet and portable, and its built-in camera with facial recognition confirms the right person is the one testing without someone having to review each test. In addition, it has “tamper sensors” that can detect multiple other ways to cheat a test, which is extremely important when child safety is on the line.
Results go out automatically to you and/or a mediator/attorney, so nobody’s left waiting or wondering. Over time, this kind of consistent monitoring can support a parent’s recovery, ease tension between co-parents, and help kids feel safer, all while keeping their safety front and center.
The Best Interests of the Child Come First
A parent’s recovery matters, but your child needs support too. Many kids of a parent with a substance use disorder think they’re the only one going through it, and they may blame themselves for what’s happening at home. Get them support early, a school counselor, a therapist, a trusted adult, and they’ll be better equipped to cope now and reconnect with their parent over time.
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