I was in Starbucks and I noticed a mother tell her teenaged son, (who was much taller than her), “You’re much too young to be drinking coffee.” I guess being 6’3" and weighing 200 pounds the kid was in danger of something
I guess times change, as I can remember being in the third grade and we were having a cub scout meeting and everyone was drinking coffee.
Of course that was the 70s.
Anyway I’d like to hear your opinions. When did you start to drink coffee? Also, what do you think is an appropriate age for kids to be drinking coffee? I remember from the book A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, all the little kids were able to drink coffee.
After high school. My family doesn’t drink coffee in the house and the school didn’t serve it either. Once I graduated and had to work, I quickly found out coffee is essential.
Around 12-ish, which would’ve been around 1982-83. I’ve always liked the flavor, and my parents always had it.
I started drinking it about daily when I started high school, so about 14.
I’ve heard rumors that it “stunts growth*”, but I’m as tall as all the other women in my family. Who are all coffee drinkers, come to think of it…maybe if we stopped, we’d all be Amazons?
*pretty sure this one is an old wives’ tale.
I grew up in the 60s and 70s and can’t remember any kids drinking coffee. My parents both drank it black and/or unsweetened, so the couple of times I asked to taste it I wasn’t favorably impressed.
I started drinking it in college. Not to stay awake, but because my brand-new boyfriend was a coffee drinker and coffee house dates were our cheap stand-by. I learned to drink it with lots of milk and sugar, which is pretty much how I still like it.
I go to a Starbucks that is in the same area as a middle school/high school campus and lots of the kids come in for drinks. I get the impression that they tend to go for stuff even sweeter and frothier than my latte, though.
I did commonly drink hot or iced tea as a kid, though, especially when we went to visit my Scottish grandmother.
My kids are 9 and 11. Other than morning coffee, we don’t generally have a lot of caffeinated drinks around the house. I don’t concern myself with the occasional soda or iced tea that my kids drink and I wouldn’t worry about a little coffee either. They have tried it at church brunches, but they don’t really care for it so far. Hot chocolate is a lot more popular.
As soon as I was old enough to go bushwalking. Coffee with tonnes of milk and sugar was the default hot drink in the thermos flask for my family. Dunkin Donuts coffee now gives me nostalgia fits.
I would like to think that parents would be able to decide for themselves when their kids are ready for the java, and of course, building up from milky coffee was not the same as starting off on a double espresso. Still, I’ve seen a child given coca-cola in a baby bottle, so obviously trusting parents to be sensible is a crap shoot.
When I was a kid (born in 73) coffee was an adult drink and kids didn’t do it, at least that’s the way it was with all the people I knew. I don’t think I remember anyone drinking coffee until their late teens and even that was rare. I only drank it in my late teens because a few of my friends liked to go drink coffee at 2 in the morning after getting drunk and that was occasional. I was in my mid to late twenties before I drank it with any regularity. I have two kids, one 6 and one 3. I can’t say when an appropriate time would be to let them start, but it won’t be anytime soon.
When I was about ten, my parents would let me have half coffee - half milk. I always liked coffee-flavored ice cream. For me it’s really the flavor, not the caffein.
I probably started drinking coffee occasionally at occasions or gatherings as an after dinner drink or with brunch when I was in high school. I didn’t drink it much at all in college. It wasn’t until my first cubicle job, where everyone I worked with seemed to have at least four cups of coffee during the day, that I started to drink it on a regular basis. I’d typically stick to one cup in the AM, though, and ridicule my coworkers about their caffeine habit throughout the rest of the day.
These days I drink a bit more. Not every day, but if I make coffee I’ll usually put on a small pot, drink a tall mug at home and fill a travel mug to take with me to class.
My breakfast has been cuban coffee and milk, or just Cuban coffee if that’s all I had, since before I started attending school, so probably 3 or 4 years old.
I started in college. I just never really got the taste for it until then. My parents were mostly instant coffee types and that always ooged me out. Once I found out that coffee actually tasted good when made well, that’s when I joined the Cult of the Bean.
But I see no reason why it should be held off as an adults only drink. Chrissakes, there are about a hundered different things a kid can suck down that will have more sugar and caffiene in one can that I’ve ingested in a weeks worth of coffee binges.
I was born in 1970. As far back as I can remember, my grandfather would give me a spoonful of his coffee or let me drink the last drops out of his cup. By the time I was eight or nine, I was allowed “coffeemilk”, which was half coffee, half milk, sugar optional. Probably by age twelve, I was drinking coffee regularly and getting headaches when I didn’t.
These days, I drink coffee almost to the exclusion of all else, approximately six cups per day.
I allow my seventeen-year-old daughter to drink it, but that’s a fairly recent development. (I, too, was always told “it’ll stunt your growth!”)
I started drinking it regularly when I was about thirty, in 1988. I can’t remember why I didn’t drink it before - I think I drank Coke in the mornings. I drink about three largish cups a day now, but only in the morning.
I do remember being allowed coffeemilk when I was a child.
I started drinking it when I was 17. Had a summer job in a “fish processing factory” and work started at 4,30 AM. Coffee turned out to be the only thing available that woke me up, so I went straight to strong black coffee - which is the way I still like it best.
I really love the smell of coffee, but I’m really just not into drinking it. Sometimes I’ll have a little or one of those iced things but that’s about all.
The kicker is that my father was a coffee roaster and a HUGE drinker of it.
When I was 15, all the cool kids in high school orchestra…
…okay, all the cool kids for a high school orchestra would make Starbucks runs before first period. I went heavy on the very sugary, milky drinks because I didn’t actually like the taste of coffee very much. (Still don’t – it’s tea for me!) I mostly stopped drinking it when I was 17 and graduated, although I still love Starbucks’ Christmas/seasonal drinks. It isn’t December until I’ve had a peppermint mocha.
I was born in 1964, and didn’t drink coffee until I was in college. It also coincided with drill weekends and working nights when I was out of school. A busy time when I needed to be awake a lot. I had a lot of burnt black coffee then.
I tried the cappucinos and espressos a year or so later and only then really began to taste and appreciate coffee.
Now my daughter has been drinking coffee for about 2 years; she’s 18 now. It gets her out the door to school in the morning, and I’m okay with that.
