Well, thank you for your opinion and your own “feelings”. As Silenus pointed out, alcohol, particularly wine, should be just another food item. Right now, my daughter sees it as something that is nice with a meal or maybe before bedtime. We occasionally chat and have a glass of wine and some popcorn before going to bed. She is in highschool and considers the “drink-till-you-puke” crowd to be a gang of neanderthals. Being raised this way, there is neither mystery nor a lure of the forbidden about alcohol and that was what I wanted.
As far as legal issues go, I do what I think best to ready my daughter for life as an adult, laws do not come into that decision.
Regardless of your opinion about about children experimenting with alcohol, my own opinion (and experience) is that they will do it at some point unless steps are taken to avoid it.
Homemade wine, aged a minimum of two months. June was a spectacular month and we developed a very good red.
It isn’t like we can go and buy some in Riyadh. Actually, decent wine is occasionally available for around US $200/bottle. Not something for every day use.
Thanks for the laugh, its been a long day.
I also did not experiment with alcohol until I got to college, and then I didn’t drink heavily (got a buzz maybe once in the three years I was there). So no, not all kids will be tempted. It’s rude to assume kids are all lushes looking for their next fix.
That being said, I was raised by parents and extended family that sips were okay, that I could try things, and that it was the mark of a responsible adult to be able to order a cocktail in a social setting. That didn’t stop me from experimenting, but it didn’t hurt either, and probably made me a more well-rounded adult in subtler ways.
No they “will” not. I never did. Nor did many of the people I know. Some children experiment with alcohol, some don’t.
Of course, it wasn’t a weird mysterious thing - my parents drank in moderatio. Had wine with dinner, had beer from time to time, and had liquor around. We had sips from time to time. No big deal.
I wouldn’t mind letting an 18 year old drink a glass of wine, with dinner, under adult supervision, with full knowledge and understanding what the rules were. I wouldn’t let a kid drink watered down wine, though - that’s got to be nasty and not good training for their tastebuds.
Growing up (starting around age 5 or so), my sisters and I were allowed little tiny cordial glasses of wine or champagne on holidays.
Once we were about 16 or so, my mother allowed us to drink wine with dinner and champagne on NYE.
I let my boys (who are 13 and 17) drink wine or champagne sometimes with dinner.
Just a glass or two. I want them to experience the entire meal, and I think sometimes the wine we open is an integral part of it.
I want them to have some experience in pairing and enjoying wines with their meals.
My 17 year old enjoys when he’s offered the wine, my 13 year old usually takes a sip of mine and opts for a glass of water.
From what I remember, children drinking at home is permisible form the age of five. (With the usual caveats, of supervision and ensuring they don’t drink too much and blah and blah)
Hm.
I remember my father giving a 3 year old boy some beer. His father was right there; they thought it was grand, but then again, my father was an alcoholic.
He gave me a sip of his Schlitz when I was about 9; told me I could drink anytime I wanted at home.
Natch, that brand tastes nasty (I dislike all beer) so i never wanted to.
Good thing he didn’t offer me Kahlua.
Also brings back memories of me and my girlfriend taking my dad’s empty beer cans and filling them with Pepsi; going outside and being obvious about drinking them.
I don’t think anyone ever saw us, tho.
I’m another person in their early twenties that never really experimented with alcohol until I was legal. I did occasionally sneak a bottle here and there but the most I ever drank at one time was three bottles of hard lemonade on New Year’s 2002, when I was twenty. That was also more than I had ever drunk at that point and, as far as I remember, the last I had until the weekend after I turned 21 in 2003, when I got completely wasted for the first time.
It was another year before I got drunk again (not because I got sick… just didn’t feel like it) and in the six months since then, I’ve probably gotten drunk another seven times? Eight? Something like that.
Despite my own behavior towards the stuff, I won’t say that kids won’t experiment with the stuff like **Garf **and amarinth have… I realize that the three of us are the exception, not the rule.
And as far as the OP is concerned, if I ever had kids, I will allow them to drink under supervision if they want to but considering I don’t have much of a taste for alcohol (I drink it only to get drunk… I hate the flavor), there won’t be much of it to drink in my house unless my future wife winds up being a drinker.
Actually, that is why I don’t do marijuana … way back in high school in the 70s, I tried marijuana, and I noticed the effect was pretty much exactly the same as alcohol on me [parents were the wine with dinner, occasional mixed drink but only at home type] and since I turned 18 before the change in age I figured that I could drink legally, and it wouldn’t interfere with a piss test that I would use alcohol instead of marijuana. Mind you, if they legalized marijuana I would be thrilled, because I generally dont drink much at all [diabetic and on atkins, so itis pretty much limited to an occasional gin and tonic, rum and diet coke or glass of wine, and I cook with wine, and like an occasional tbsp of brandy in my coffee]
Put me down as one who would be ok with a return to prohibition except for my firm belief that the government should not legislate morality. [note that alcohol abstinance to me is a moral choice, unless you are a recovering alcoholic, or forgoing alcohol for health reasons like pregnancy or medications. I am very careful to keep track of which friends are teetotalers and which arent and dont make anything with alcohol when I have teetotalers visiting.] I would be a bit sad to give up my coq au vin or other recipes that use booze in it, but I would live=)
I don’t really consider having wine with dinner to be “drinking” in the sense that the term is generally used. While my parents were married, our family always had wine with dinner, and we children were generally given a small glass of it if we wanted (we then felt very grown-up, took one sip, and drank water). I married into a family where everyone but my husband is a teetotaller, so they don’t have a tradition of wine with dinner. Perhaps because of this, we tend not to have wine at home on an everyday basis. When we do, for special occasions, the children are welcome to taste the wine, but they never want any (because it “tastes bad”). If anything, I feel far worse that I’m neglecting to teach my children the proper appreciation of fine food than I do for offering them an alcoholic drink.
I happen to agree with you. However, that is not the way law currently regards it, nor is it the way that most American society treats it.
If you choose to disregard the law in order to raise your child, that’s fine. I choose not to drink alcohol because I would be violating the law and the benefits outweigh the risks. It has nothing to do with your statement that children will experiment with alcohol.
Your opinion that children will is clearly wrong. Perhaps many children will, or most children will, or children might, but “children will” is clearly incorrect.
Adults will treat teenagers with disrespect and derision would be just as incorrect, but seems at least as accurate.
This was exactly my father’s attitude. From about the age of five, I was allowed to have water and wine with dinner when my parents did (about once every other week or so). From about 15 or so I was allowed to have a beer when we had our Friday-night pizza. Seems to have worked. All through college, I’d have a beer every few evenings, but I think I only got drunk about three or four times in the four years I was there (part of the problem was that my father raised me to appreciate the good stuff; as a result, I couldn’t afford to binge).
shrug. I’ve always felt that most American society is dead wrong, and that most social laws, being made to reflect the views of society, are equally wrong. Why change now?
I have rather a confused attitude toward drinking that I’m only now sorting out as an adult. There are alcoholics on both sides of my family. Most of the rest of my relatives never touch the stuff and look down on those who do. I had a few experimental tastes of alcohol as a child. My dad drank heavily, it seems, forever. He gave me a sip of his beer once. I was expecting it to taste like root beer (hey, I was five, what did I know?) and was sorely disappointed. When I asked him why he drank that stuff, he said because he liked it, which I could not fathom, since I have always made a practice of not putting things in my mouth again that tasted disgusting. I was eleven or so and on a trip with my parents and they bought some stuff and made themselves each a Tom Collins in the hotel room. They made much weaker ones diluted with 7-up for me and my sister (who was about eight or nine at the time). They tasted good, of course, what with all the 7-up. I never touched anything alcoholic again until six months before my twenty-first birthday, when some friends and I had an amusing afternoon and evening drinking an absurd amount of wine coolers. There was much giggling.
The attitude I absorbed toward drinking was that it was very wrong and notwithstanding my father’s open drinking, which my mother disapproved of, sneaking around was the way to have your drinks. Healthy, wasn’t it? Because of my father (who drank plenty openly but even more secretly, I found out), I had a disapproving attitude toward alcohol and drinkers. My parents had led me to believe that even a little bit of drinking would lead inevitably to alcoholism. I had never seen anyone handle alcohol except in the way my father did. He was seldom drunk, but never completely sober either.
It’s only in the past five years that I have started to develop a more reasonable attitude toward drinking. I haven’t yet decided what to do with my own children if I have any.
I rember once when I was young I got the bright idea that I was going to drink one of my Dad’s beers. Well I opened it, took about five sips, and decided Kool-aid would be much tastier.
About an hour later the old man comes in to my bedroom with the unused portion of the beer I opened; and this was pretty much the conversation that took place after words:
Dad: [looking quite frustrated] “Did you do this?” [holds up half full beer of can]
Me: ??
Dad: “Did you open this beer can up?”
me: “Umm, yeah…”
Dad: “Dammit! son, that’s nearly a full can of beer you wasted!”
Good to know the ol’ man had his priorities straight…
