Regardless of whether the harm conferred by low parental monitoring is due to negative peer relationships, more opportunity to use alone, a parent-adolescent relationship characterized by poor communication, or all three, the present results support previous research highlighting the benefits of interventions aimed at increasing parental monitoring and knowledge (e.g., Kristjansson et al., 2010). These results also support previous work showing that the effects of monitoring and/or knowledge may extend years into the future (Laird, Pettit, Bates, & Dodge, 2003). One specific area to target, as previously suggested (Becker et al., 2012; Spirito et al., 2011), is adolescents already in treatment for AUD, who could benefit from an additional component that targets increasing the parental connection via monitoring.
