Gilford moms have their own ideas

After local residents finished hearing a panel of experts talk about the teen alcohol abuse problem in their community, some mothers among the crowd who attended a public forum on the problem began holding a free-wheeling, down-to-earth discussion among themselves about how to keep their kids from getting caught up in drinking.

“I’ll be a tattletale,” volunteered one mom. “I’ll call the police. Maybe we need to do with the UNH (University of New Hampshire) police do and walks the streets at night.”

Another woman said that teenage boys don’t have “sleepovers.” “If he says he wants to sleep over someone’s house that means he’s going to be drinking.”

“I don’t believe in sleepovers,” said another mother.

One woman said whenever her son says he’s going to a friend’s house she always gets a landline phone number for the address. She said if she calls and no one answers, she knows her son is not there. “I’ve gone online to find the address and I’ve gone out in a snowstorm to look for him,” she said.

Denise Miller of the Belknap County Sheriff’s Department, herself a mother, congratulated the woman for her active concern.

“And always have them come in and kiss you goodnight when they come home,” the woman added.

“Then you can smell if they’ve been drinking,” another mom said.