Los Angeles (E! Online, by Gina Serpe)  Lindsay Lohan's mother, Dina, has told E! News' Ryan Seacrest that her daughter has been attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, though the elder Lohan stopped short of saying that the starlet has formally entered the program.

Dina Lohan made the comments to Seacrest on his KIIS-FM Los Angeles radio show Friday, adding that her 20-year-old daughter does not have a drinking problem per se, but is simply attending the meetings as many of her friends do and have found them beneficial.

"That is true," she replied, when asked if Lindsay was attending AA meetings. "You know, a lot of people she hangs out with go and it's a positive thing. As a parent, you tell them what you can tell them, but she's 20 and I'm not gonna say, 'Stay home and don't go out,' that's a ridiculous thing to do.

"I'm there for support and I'll obviously give her my opinion, but she's very smart."

The mother of three has never publicly come out against her eldest daughter's non-stop partying and the bad press that results.

Over the summer, James G. Robinson, the producer of the Lindsay star vehicle Georgia Rule, issued a public letter to the actress, deriding her behavior on the movie set as that of a "spoiled child" and saying that her party-hearty ways were affecting production.

Dina quickly defended her daughter, saying Lindsay was a consummate professional who had to be taken to the hospital because of on-set conditions, not because of late nights, and calling Robinson's public scolding "ridiculous."

"I'm a mother and will do what I need to do to protect my child," she said at the time."I don't feel it should be aired out and everyone should know. It's personal."

At least until now.

Reports of Lohan being active in the 12-step program first began circulating in November, when paparazzi photos of the Mean Girls star donning a red sobriety chip reading "90 Days" made the Internet rounds. The chips are typically distributed to AA members to commemorate different lengths of sobriety.

At the time, however, Lohan's rep told the New York Post that the chip was a tribute to one of the actress' friends, who had recently hit the alcohol-free benchmark.

On Friday morning, the tab's Page Six gossip column reported that Lohan had attended "several" AA meetings this week, only to be spotted partying at Wednesday night's GQ Men of the Year dinner.

For her part, the tabloid-hounded Lohan has long denied that her hard-partying ways were either out of control or even that hard.

During a recent stop at the Oprah Winfrey Show to promote Bobby, Lohan played down her bad publicity: "I'm 20 years old. Is it a crime to go...dancing with your friends? It's not. I have a life and I have my family and I have work and I have those three things."