Children drinking coffee

[vivalostwages]

My 6.5-year-old cousin loves an occasional cup of coffee with milk, as does my 10-year-old niece.
Is this a harmful practice for kids?
How about if they only drink a cup on occasion and not every day?

[KarlGrenze]

hmm...I have drink coffee since...well, let's say that I remember drinking it when I was like 4-5, and it was common by then (I am now 18). Did it had a major effect on me?...Not really, other than I became indifferent to the effect of the caffeine. Now I need a REALLY STRONG coffee to keep me up if I have the need to. Also, I developed a taste for drinking cold coffee. I also drank it with lots of sugar.

I think that there are studies that kids should not drink coffee because of the caffeine and not making them addictive.

[Kalt]

better than beer. Don't worry. Caffeine is good for you. Just don't let them go too heavy on the cream and sugar or they'll get fat.

[screech-owl]

Ironically, sometimes the caffeine in coffee calms them down.
When I was teaching in elementary school, we had a very hyperactive student named John (not his real name, no, actually, it was). Part of John's mainstreaming plan was that if he should become very hyper with loss of self control (after a few weeks of observing the child, the warning signs were very clear: excessive fidgiting, mumbling, tapping one foot), he was to go to the nurse's office and have black coffee (no sugar, no cream) with her. For the most part, John was a very good student, but there were times when we both looked at each other and said, "Coffee? Yes.". 20 minutes later, he was fine.
(It was not an excuse to get out of class - he was a good music student and enjoyed class, showing up on his own to a later class to make up what he missed earlier.)

[mojo filter]

I apparently have some weird condition myself as coffee will sometimes put me straight to sleep. But, as for children and coffee, if it is a question at all of whether they should be drinking coffee or not, observe them while they drink regular coffee and then also drinking decaf. If there is no benefit to the regular coffee (sedative affect), then let them drink decaf when they want a cup of java.

My children will damn near fall over themselves to be able to smell the grounds as I spoon them from the coffee can and even this little contact seems to wire them:eek:, so my children definitely do not drink coffee.

[Johnny L.A.]

Dad was career Navy, so coffee was ever-present in the house. I started drinking 1/2 coffee, 1/2 milk and two spoons of sugar when I was about five. There was dad in his black jacket with the two strands of gold on the sleeve, the shoulder boards with the gold stripes and star, and his white cap with the gold and silver Navy emblem reflecting off of the shiny black visor... and there was me, drinking a cuppa joe with dad before he went to sea. Harmful? I'd call it a bonding experience.

When he retired from the Navy he was home all the time and he and mom and I would sit in our stools drinking java. And the water skiing out at Mission Bay. A fire was burning in the concrete ring, there were doughnuts... and coffee. The adults would pile into dad's Philippine mahogany 20-footer, shipped over from Sasebo Shipbuilding and equipped with a blueprinted Oldsmobile V-8 connected directly to the screw. I'd play in the sand or catch little crabs and minnows. When I was older I'd ride in the boat, getting off on the speed and spray. (As it happens, I was five when I got into the South Bay Boating Club Polar Bears and the Penguins. Too young to ski, but the Polar Bears let me "get all wet" -- much to the fright of the adults who don't know how five-year-olds think, and I rode on the front of dad's skis for the Penguins on the same day.)

Coffee for me is an important touch-stone with my late father and gives me fond memories of my childhood. Set the stage, pour some coffee, and bond with your kids.

Oh, and several West Coast Dopers have met me, and I'm sure they'll tell you that early coffee drinking had no apparent effect on me.

[CnoteChris]

Originally posted by screech-owl
Ironically, sometimes the caffeine in coffee calms them down.
When I was teaching in elementary school, we had a very hyperactive student named John (not his real name, no, actually, it was). Part of John's mainstreaming plan was that if he should become very hyper with loss of self control (after a few weeks of observing the child, the warning signs were very clear: excessive fidgiting, mumbling, tapping one foot), he was to go to the nurse's office and have black coffee (no sugar, no cream) with her. For the most part, John was a very good student, but there were times when we both looked at each other and said, "Coffee? Yes.". 20 minutes later, he was fine.
(It was not an excuse to get out of class - he was a good music student and enjoyed class, showing up on his own to a later class to make up what he missed earlier.)

Congratualations!! You found the poor mans ridilin. Seriously.

One of the key ingredients to ridilin is caffeine, or a similar substitute like caffeine (So my psychologist father says).

[CnoteChris]

I should add that I can, and often do, drink tons of caffeine in a day with no ill or odd effects at all. I can nod right off after drinking four or five cups of coffee. I don’t get jittery or anything- I’m almost calmer when I drink caffeine than when I go without. With it I’m collected clear thinking, without it, I can sometimes be bouncing off the walls with energy and thoughts.

Like I mentioned above, my father says that caffeine, or a similar medically approved stimulant, often has a calming effect on ADHD kids (My father thinks I’ve been an ADHD’r since childhood.).

So, those jolts of caffeine you sometimes give to that kid has the same calming effect on him that Ridilin typically does.

Have someone check that kid out, post haste!

[donkeyoatey]

Originally posted by CnoteChris
One of the key ingredients to ridilin is caffeine, or a similar substitute like caffeine (So my psychologist father says).


IANAD or AP but Ritalin is the brand name for methylphenidate, and caffeine is, well, caffeine.
They are both stimulants, though, and I found several sites
that said caffeine can have similar effects to Ritalin, and can also be used to compliment Ritalin.

[CnoteChris]

Where's my coffee!! I'm a typin' too fast!! Gotta calm me down!



Thanks for the clarification donkeyoatey- Ritalin, methylphendiate, etc. etc..

[screech-owl]

Criminey, couldn't think of the name Ritalin.
John was on that too. Seemed to help when the Ritalin wasn't doing its job.

This was years ago, about the time it seemed when every itchy and antsy kid was given Ritalin. There were quite a few who didn't really need it, but for the few that did, it saved a teacher's sanity.

All I say is, when John started up, thank the deities for coffee.

[Fionn]

I don't think there's anything wrong with kids drinking coffee. However, my habit did escalate:
I started drinking coffee with my grandfather when I was about four. I stayed with my grandparents while my mom was at work, and every day we would have our coffee, after Woody Woodpecker.
I started having coffee on the weekends with my parents when I was in the second grade. They would sit and read the Sunday paper with their coffee, while I would read the funnies. In junior high, my mom would leave me a single cup of coffee to reheat in the morning. By the time I got to high school, we were leaving at the same time in the morning and I could just pour my own. I used a two-cup mug for regular days and a Super Copilot for when I really needed to wake up.
My coffee consumption actually went down in college.

[Creaky]

We were not permitted to drink coffee as kids; my mother told us it would stunt our growth, that it was a drink for grown-ups, etc. Cracks me up that they let us have wine, though. Dunno what her coffee prejudice was all about.

I looove coffee now, though. Totally addicted. Proud owner of an espresso-cappucino machine, a drip pot, and two shiny french presses. And don't even get me started on how to make the perfect cup of joe.

[Johnny L.A.]

Proud owner of an espresso-cappucino machine, a drip pot, and two shiny french presses.
I might have you beat there. Espresso/cappucino machine, stovetop espresso pot, single demi-tasse camp stove top backpacking espresso pot (but since it only makes a demi-tasse at a time, I use the bigger one instead), boil'n'pour drip pot, stovetop percolator, electric percolator, two Vietnames Cafe sua da [sp.] makers, and a French press. And sometimes I keep a jar of instant for emergencies.

[smoke]

IANAD, so please forgive any poor choices of terminology:

I have second-hand knowledge of a couple who actually stunted the hell out of their child's growth by allowing her to become addicted to caffeine. The pediatrician, one year, put this child in the top growth index/percentile(?)- the next year, at a check-up to figure out why the child cried all the time and hadn't grown, it turned out that the only thing the child would drink was powdered iced tea! The mother "didn't realize" that it had caffeine in it, and didn't seem to find it all strange that the kid would scream her lungs out if she was offered anything but iced tea to drink! Sad and scary, I know. The kid's growth had been severely stunted by this idiocy.

OTOH, I have also, through several years of working with kids having behavioral disorders, seen small amounts of caffeine used to focus the child and calm him/her down. The extremely non-medical explanation that I've been given for this is that the caffeine DOES act as a stimulant, but the gland or whatever that it stimulates is actually responsible for producing calming chemicals in the body (like endorphines, I guess). For reasons that I don't know, sometime around puberty, this changes, and caffeine begins to have the effect of stimluating a person's behavior.

Although, the line between the two must be at least SOMEWHAT blurry, as a late-night cup of candy-coffee (lots o' sugar and cream) can often relax me to the point of sleepiness.

Perhaps Qadgtop will be along to further elucidate or correct me where I'm wrong.

[Chronos]

Would anyone mind too terribly if we shifted this thread from personal annecdotes more towards researched data? No? Thanks.

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

I'd suspect the kid failed to thrive not because of the caffiene, but because it was drinking only a nonnutritive drink like tea, when it should have been getting a fat-rich substance, such as milk (preferably breast). I've seen the same thing happen with parents who said their kid would only drink juice (no caffiene in it). All that empty sugar, no essential fats. Brain development is dependent on getting adequate essential fats during childhood. Especially linoleic acid.

I'm gonna (mostly) skip the debate about caffiene in kids, other than to say that pediatric brain development is not well understood, and there are bodies of literature which say that caffiene (a definite stimulant, like ritalin, also a bronchodilator like theophylline) has both beneficial and detrimental possibilities. I've kept my kids off of caffienated soft drinks until they were teens, for the most part, I figured the fewer neuroactive substances their brains were exposed to while still developing, the better. But I wouldn't hesitate to use stimulants like ritalin (prescribed by their own doc, not me!) if their doc thought it was necessary.

[Johnny L.A.]

smoke: I drank coffee all the time as a kid, and I grew to be 5' 11".

Of course, not everything I drank contained caffeine.

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

Originally posted by Johnny L.A.
smoke: I drank coffee all the time as a kid, and I grew to be 5' 11".

Of course, not everything I drank contained caffeine.


Yeah, and how's your gut treating you these days?

[JillGat]

According to Russell A. Barkley, PhD, in his book, Taking Charge of ADHD: "Although there were some early reports in the popular press in the 1970s that caffeine might be useful, the scientific studies done on this subject have not borne this out. Therefore we recommend that you consider only the three stimulant drugs just listed (for ADHD)."

Other sources I've seen support this, too. There is no evidence that caffeine works like Ritalin for kids with ADHD. - Jill

[CnoteChris]

Originally posted by JillGat
There is no evidence that caffeine works like Ritalin for kids with ADHD. - Jill

I certainly wasn't saying caffeine is, or should be, a substitute for Ritalin. Far from it. I was simply saying that caffeine, taken under certain conditions and in certain amounts, can mimick the effects of Ritalin and similar drugs that address ADHD.

The interesting part of this, to me anyways, is the idea of prescribing a stimulant to a kid or adult that, on the surface, seems over-stimulated to begin with. Kinda interesting treatment, if you ask me.

[JillGat]

[[The interesting part of this, to me anyways, is the idea of prescribing a stimulant to a kid or adult that, on the surface, seems over-stimulated to begin with. Kinda interesting treatment, if you ask me.]]

We've been over this before, but here's my simplistic take on it:

People with ADHD have a piece of their brain that is understimulated (it's in the frontal lobe, I think). So they set about trying to stimulate it in order to feel normal, by engaging all of their senses - moving, touching, talking, etc. With a stimulant like Ritalin, that part of the brain is stimulated, as it normally is in people without ADHD. So they are able to be normal.

[CnoteChris]

Originally posted by JillGat
We've been over this before, but here's my simplistic take on it:

To be honest with you, I didn't know we'd been through this before- I must have missed that day. Maybe I was in the principals office being lectured on the evils of being disruptive in class.

The whole point of my post was simply to point out that the response that the OP'er had seen in that kid is not that uncommon with what people that have ADHD see when they take in certain amounts of caffeine.

In my case, tons of caffeine. It calms me much like the cups of coffee calmed the OP'ers kid.

To me, anyways, it seemed the OP'er was surprised by the reaction the kid had had to the caffeine, especially since the kid was hyper before the cups of coffee. I was pointing out that the incredulous treatment of treating kids with stimulation problems with stimulants is often the basis for drugs like Ritalin and the like.

[Badtz Maru]

My nephew Greg has been drinking coffee since he was 3 or so, about 12 years. Doesn't seem to have had any bad effects on him, he's not stunted and he's really intelligent, probably a better guitar player than I will ever be.