Well, I occasionally offer my 6 year old a sip of beer or wine. He just looks at me like I’m crazy and says, “Mom, I’m just a kid…bleah!” Sometime times he says, “No thanks, I don’t drink.” It’s so cute. I tell him to just keep saying that when someone offers him alcohol when he’s a teenager. If at some point he actually says yes to my offer, I’ll give him a Dixie cup.
My Grandpa used to give me little Dixie cups of beer when I was a kid. We were always offered sips of wine or whatever growing up, although mostly my family only drank at celebrations or holidays.
The fact that alcohol wasn’t this foreign, forbidden temptation is probably why I didn’t drink alot in high school or college the way some kids do.
Oops. I wasn’t clear in the OP. My friend’s cousin’s husband let’s his daughter drink. Not talking about dinner, but getting up in the morning and grabbing one of those bottled mixed drinks out of the fridge. Going out and drinking with friends. That sort of thing.
And then, coincidentally, I was watching Father Goose, as I described. So the OP is: Is it okay to let children drink a little wine with dinner. (Or at least, that’s what I meant to ask.) It’s just that my friend’s step-relative followed by the movie got me thinking about it.
The problem in America is that there is rarely any civilized drinking until you are 21 where you are no longer treated as a second-class citizen. Many people have mentioned Europe as an example and it is true. I’ll give an example from my college. There were bars that would allow 18-yearolds in as minors who couldn’t buy, but of course all you had to do was simply ask a 21-year-old to buy a round and you had booze. But the risk was also great that a cop would come in and your best bet was to get drunk and not have a drink in your hand.
There are actually a myriad of differences as to why drinking in America is much more different than in Europe. Firstly in Europe most cities are much more compact meaning a walk home is normally an option. This allows you to go out with friends casually and not make a big event of it. When you are young you still may want this, but its kind of hard considering all of the laws, situations stacked against you in America. Add on top of that, tee-totalling parents, and dry counties, and there is lots of driving and sneakiness involved. One of the times I had a really good impression of the cops in my county was at my graduation party. We had it at someone’s lakehouse and there was alcohol involved but it was supervised by adults and nobody drove home. They came over and said hello and saw that everything was under control and then left. I think that it was the correct approach.
As for giving kids drinks? I say why not? My only worry would be alcoholism. There is still a great debate concerining alcoholsim, whether it is caused by social or genetic factors. I believe that abbusive behavior can be genetic, but if a person is in the right circumstances, then he will not be an addict. If I have a kid whom I consider responsible I would want all of his partying to take place under my supervision, if possible. But if you live in America, what is the point? He will probably have to drive somewhere to go to parties anyway. But it is always a good idea to get a kid accustomed to alcohol, but it depends on the kid and the situation. Learning to drink casually is a very good thing and can lead to really good times that are also responsible.
I allowed my daughter to drink at home with dinner when she was an older teen. Usually she did not really care for any when offered. What I hoped to do was de-mystify the allure of alcohol as well as teach her the value of moderation. She drinks rarely, and then with moderation, as a young adult.
Related but a <slight hijack>, I really burned it up about not, ever driving after drinking. If you ask yourself if you are ok to drive…you are not because one of the first things to go is the ability to answer that question. My rule when my daughter lived at home was…if you are out and have too much to drink or your driver has too much to drink…call me any time of the night…and I will come pick you and your friends up absolutely no questions asked.
She still asks me if I will be on back-up to come get her if she goes somewhere alone where she might drink. I have never had to but…yayyy!! I would in a heartbeat and I’m glad she knows she can ask me.
That’s very smart IMO. While you may never know which she considers worse, driving after two beers, or calling mom, I think this is much better than the old approach of tee-totalers. Telling someone to not do something that they want to do, and is socially cool as a teen never works well. Getting home is just a problem, and when I have kids I will defenitely offer this service to my kids. What is it to you. Maybe you lose 30-45 minutes of sleep, but you know that your kid made the right choice, which is priceless.
A great big **DITTO ** on that. Not only is it a very smart idea from the safety and alcohol side, but it give the kid an out if they want to go home for whatever other reason: they don’t like somehting that’s going on at the party, be it drugs or vandalism or theft, they got into a fight with their boy/girlfriend, somebody is coming on to them who gives them the creeps, whatever.
Another benefit of giving them a wide array of potential reasons to come get them, is that it gives them an option of stating a “less embarassing” reason to save face for getting a ride home from the “fogies”. If jr. is embarassed to say he doesn’t want to ake a toke, he can say he doesn’t want to ride with an intoxicated driver instead, and take off.
PS. I am regularly impressed by the wisdom & valuable life experience that can be found in the Straight Dope boards. Thanks, Dopers.
From a fairly young age I could ask my dad for a sip of his beer or wine and he’d let me have a sip. We could have wine with dinner if we chose, or have wine or a mixed drink at a restaurant if we chose, but I very rarely did. Maybe twice I’d order an amaretto sour.
Now, I’ll occasionally drink something like Talea, but it’s rare. I’ve never been drunk. Two drinks and I feel very flushed and disgusting, so I never drink more.
And my father was an alcoholic. I was terrified I’d become one, too, so I avoided drinking as a teen.
My husband and I have had this exact same conversation with my oldest son. Especially now that his Friday/Saturday night curfew is a little later, and he has a girlfriend and something of a social life, I worry about what he’s doing and who he’s with. He doesn’t drive, but we’ve emphasized over and over not to ever get in a car with anyone that has been drinking. At all. We’ll pick him up, pay for a cab, whatever we need to do, no questions, just don’t get in the car with someone that’s been drinking.
They really get it. They’ve seen my husband and I come home in cabs after nights of dancing (and drinking), and they know when we go into the city we either stay the night, or take turns being DD. My oldest has taken notice on several occasions and thanked us for not only instilling ‘safe drinking guidelines’, but following them ourselves.
According to MADD, fifteen states do not prohibit consumption of alcohol by individuals under 18.
We rarely drink at home, but if it came up I think I would allow my teenagers to sip some wine on special occasions. I have always allowed them to taste a tiny bit from my glass at Christmas and New Years.
My husband lived in Italy when he was a kid (age 8 to 10) and says that all the kids had wine mixed with coke served with dinner.
My parents didn’t really drink too often when I was a child. When they did however I used to occasionally ask for a little sip. Don’t know why I bothered really because I always thought it was foul.
Until one time when my grandmother was around and she had a very small glass of Archers (Peach Snapps for any one who isn’t aware of the stuff) and I tried the tiniest amount known to man and loved it. From then on I was always allowed a small glass mixed with lemonade on special occasions. (I was probably around 8)
Never did me any harm and I didn’t go out binge drinking in my teens either so it
can’t be that bad.
Plus even now it’s the only thing I’d choose to drink when I’m out…
I think that the key is, if you get to try alcohol and experience some of its effects whilst you don’t have enough money or autonomy to buy it yourself then you are less likely to go crazy when you reach 18 or 21 and find you have both money (if you can get a job) and this easily available legal and potentially dangerous drug to spend it on.
Hear hear, Lorene. This smacks of child abuse in more than one way, and frankly, scares me a lot.
There is rampant alcoholism in my family as well. My maternal grandfather, paternal grandmother and various other family members were/are raging alcoholics with no control over their drinking. My mom’s dad was so abusive that for a long time she didn’t want liquor in the house. She realized, as I would hope all parents who love their children would, that making liquor so taboo would drive her kids to seek it out in dangerous ways.
My brother and I were always allowed to sip whatever they were drinking (I liked amaretto but beer was nasty :D. ) I was never tempted to get beer just to “try it out” like so many of my friends were. As I got older, I was allowed to drink mixed drinks with my friends as long as we never left the house.
I did binge drink a little in college, but as soon as I graduated, I stopped drinking so much. My brother binge drank in high school and now doesn’t touch the stuff. If someone is going to become an alcoholic, it will happen. Your “punishment” is NOT going to work, Askia.
Goes double for me. My favorite sin is the dark chocolate covered liqueur filled cherries if6was9 buys for me in a little shop in Pennsylvania. And the Macy’s out here sells bottle shaped chocolate filled with liquor at Christmas time. Hm. Some interesting psychology behind that.
Both of my kids are allowed a sip or two out of my wine glass. They haven’t shown any tendency to gulp it, or to sneak drinks for themselves, and I doubt they would. They have seen people in various states of inebriation at weddings, etc, and my son’s comment, IIRC, was “Who wants to look that stupid?”
I suspect that Maastricht may be referring to the fact that it used to be illegal to bring liqueur-filled chocolates into the US when entering the country, as they were on the “Prohibited Items” list (just under explosives, IIRC).
It appears from the current Form 6059B that this ban is no longer in place, and I can’t pull up an online cite for the earlier prohibition. However, I can say that my then-girlfriend and I fell foul of the ruling when entering the US from Europe a few years ago just before Christmas, with a couple of boxes of liqueur-filled chocolates as presents for her family. Despite our protestations, the US Customs would not let the chocolates pass, but did not prevent us from offering them to other passengers in line behind us.
It may be that Maastricht had the same problem – or just noticed the list of Prohibited Items – and inferred that liqueur-filled chocolates were totally banned in the US.
I never did get the Customs agents to explain the justification behind the ban, and decided that discretion was the better part of valor so let it drop.
All I know is that when I tried to buy some alcohol filled chocolates in a mall in Phoenix, AZ, this spring, the shopassistant told me they didn’t sell those and that I wouldn’t find them anywhere else in the mall.
At the time I just thought: “Well, given the ban in the USA on alcohol for minors, that makes sense. A box of cherry-liquor filled chocolates could, in theory, make a young child mildly intoxicated”.
But maybe it was just Arizona, or just that store, or just that particular shopassistant who didn’t want to admit she didn’t know where to find the chocolates on her first day at work.
Ah, well, Arizona. I tried sending a bottle of wine as a housewarming gift to someone in Arizona. Apparently that’s not possible, either. According to wine.com, it’s one of the few states that does not allow alcohol to be shipped directly to its residents. So, I’m not terribly surprised about the chocolates.
I was a little disappointed to find that I couldn’t buy a bottle of wine on Sundays when I went back east this summer. Also, I couldn’t get it at the grocery store. It just sounds terribly inconvenient.
My step daughters in Utah tell me that in order to get a drink there, it’s necessary to go to a club (state run), bring a small bottle of alcohol, and the waitress needs to mix it for them. I was speechless after that one.
Why some of these laws haven’t been rewritten I’m not sure; they’re outdated. Freedom of religion is all very nice, but not when it impinges on my right to get a good glass of zinfandel, dammit.
If you want weird, try Kentucky. In most counties it is illegal to buy or sell alcohol although it is OK to posess. They make most of the world’s bourbon but you can’t buy a bottle of it.
