[Closed] Children drinking at home

Allowed them both (4 and 7) to taste wine and beer.
Nothing more than an experimental sip though!

I'm very dubious of those figures though. I'd like to see some more details on the survey (what was [i]actually[/i] asked? How big was the sample and how was it selected?)

Oh aye...

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and the essential accompanyment....

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My kids (8, 7 & 3) all have an occasional sip of my beer/wine/meths (and always, always hate it!), but using it as a bribe?! What a waste..... 😉

A bribe for good behavior! My worst behavior has always been when i'm pissed!!

My kids have tasted beer/wine/bubbly.

I'd be lucky if my daughter (7) would try anything but water, she won't entertain drinking anything else, no juice, no fizzy drinks not even flavoured water
Regardless though I wouldn't waste decent (or even cheap) alcohol on my kids, its all for me!

My brother and I were given red wine at meal times (watered down) from and early age (probably 8ish onwards). Quite common on the continent.

PS... It did not make me a responsible drinker! 😳

My kids (16 & 14) arent bothered at all for it. Boy had a couple of bottles on his prom night but not a regular occurence. Girl has the occasion sip of my G & T.

Dearest daughter who is soon to be 16 has had a few hot tub parties at ours with her mates over say the last 6/8 months, we then get kicked out for the evening. The wife has bought them a couple of those really weak cocktail type mixes and perhaps a cider each. We have returned home to normal scenes. I'd rather introduce alcohol in to their lives with some semblance of control rather than them drinking bottles of vodka down the park with mates. As for bribery that's just ridiculous!

Yeah as a kid we were allowed snowballs at Christmas (advocaat, lemonade and a glacé cherry) but I hated the taste of beer so had no desire to even ask for it. I swore I'd never drink the revolting stuff 😀

Eldest is 12 - occasionally with dinner on a Saturday evening he'll have a half 'shandy' that about 1 part lager and 4 parts lemonade, it's not a bribe, I'd never sell it as such, but it's usually when he's been more tolerable.

He's had a shot once, we were eating in L'Etal in Morzine, they always bring outa shot glass of schnapps at the end of your meal, they brought him one too, he was 10 at the time, the waiter looked a me, I looked at him, we shrugged and off he went. Eldest turned his back to look at his mum and I downed it and replaced it with his lemonade, there was enough residue to leave a bit of a taste, word got around school, I had to have a word.

See also:

[url= https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/18/even-moderate-drinking-by-parents-can-upset-children-study ]Even moderate drinking by parents can upset children[/url]

I quite often saw my parents and friends a bit "tired and emotional". It's had no effect on me offisher.

(Tax-dodging) Guardian caught in another bullshit fact shocker!

Allowed them both (4 and 7) to taste wine and beer.

IIRC the minimum age is 5 by law (on private premises, i.e. at home) in England and Wales (poss N. Ireland; no idea baout Scotland).

My 7 yo shows no interest in asking to try, but she may be allowed some watered down wine now and again. My oncern is mostly that she drinks so quickly even a dilute amount will have an undersirable effect.

My parents were sensible with me, and I have developed an overall sensible relationship with alcohol (after [s]several[/s] one or two lairy moments in between).

my kids (5 and 3) like to steal the froth from my "mucky" beer.
I seem to recall as a kid having wine with Sunday dinner but not until I was at least 11.

[quote=enfht ](Tax-dodging) Guardian caught in another bullshit fact shocker!

Ahem...

http://news.sky.com/story/x-10542447
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37129850
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/half-of-parents-let-under-14s-drink-alcohol-at-home-h60wddfxk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/19/half-of-parents-with-children-under-the-age-of-14-allow-them-to/
http://www.****/health/article-3747218/HALF-parents-let-children-14-drink-alcohol-home-reward-school-achievements-stop-rebelling.html

Here's the actual press release from Churchill if anyone cares:

https://www.churchill.com/press-office/releases/2016/half-of-parents-let-their-U14s-drink-alcohol-at-home

"Research conducted by Opinium amongst a representative [b]sample of 1005 UK parents[/b] of children aged 5-17 completed between 3 to 10 June 2016"

Also [i]"[b]Of those who allow their children to consume alcohol in the home[/b], more than a third (34%) do so to help prevent their offspring rebelling."[/i]. So no, not 34%, but 34% of the 42% that allow under 14s to drink.

My boy is 14..looks older and hangs with some lads a couple of years older ..I have allowed him the occasional fruit flavoured cider ( I know cider is made from fruit )at home..
He went to an all night party a couple of months back and returned a good deal under the weather ..a lesson learnt as having gone to other parties since he has returned as fresh as a daisy .
We didn't make a fuss at the time ..dont think we needed to.

Yeah kind what I expected GrahamS more people letting their kids taste alcohol not drinking regularly.

1005 😆

It was because of bribery with alcohol that we ended up with kids in the first place...

Our 10 month old has already developed a liking for real ale.. I'm rather proud of her.

n.b she's not actually tasted any, just lunges for my pint glass if its ever in the vicinity.

and always, always hate it

Isn't the reason for that because kids have more sensitive taste receptors for bitter flavours (I guess as poisonous berries, leaves etc taste bitter). Start them on something sweet like a nice Sauternes and they'll be fine.

Mibbe a wee bit of smack for after? Half a line of Charlie?.... 😆

Start my kid on the same hard stuff we used to have on a weekend

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*hic*

I'm a monster:

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My boy is 14..looks older and hangs with some lads a couple of years older ..I have allowed him the occasional fruit flavoured cider ( I know cider is made from fruit )at home..
He went to an all night party a couple of months back and returned a good deal under the weather

mmm slightly raised eyebrow at that one. All night parties at 14, hope it wasn't on a school night.

"Research conducted by Opinium amongst a representative sample of 1005 UK parents of children aged 5-17 completed between 3 to 10 June 2016"

Also "Of those who allow their children to consume alcohol in the home, more than a third (34%) do so to help prevent their offspring rebelling.". So no, not 34%, but 34% of the 42% that allow under 14s to drink.

My girl (5) and boy (nearly 2) have tried a sip of my ale at home (and grandads Guiness at the pub!).
Had exactly the effect I expected with the girl "ewww yucky beer" (result) the boy not so much.... 😯

My 29 year old daughter quite likes the taste ......

Presumably that sample of 1005 really means about 500 families.
If so, and assuming my maths is correct, a slightly less sensational headline would have been 'less than 4% of parents with children under 14 allow them to drink alcohol once a month'

It's usually done by landlines as they're easier to pick a statistical sample from (i.e. so many from affluent areas, so many from poor areas etc). So it's probably 1005 households.

Anyone here allow anything like this?

My eldest tried and enjoyed a few tbsps of some alcopop thing a while back. I'd rather she learned to enjoy alcohol as a normal thing. Forbidden fruit is the most desirable after all.

Gary_M - Member

My boy is 14..looks older and hangs with some lads a couple of years older ..I have allowed him the occasional fruit flavoured cider ( I know cider is made from fruit )at home..
He went to an all night party a couple of months back and returned a good deal under the weather

mmm slightly raised eyebrow at that one. All night parties at 14, hope it wasn't on a school night.

Seriously? I know I went to all night parties at that age, and I hope when my child is older I'll know about it rather than be told "I'm off for a sleepover at xx's house" which seemed to be the default way of going to parties without telling parents in my yoof.

Also I make 2 months ago summer holidays?

I was probably 14 or 15 when I had a sleepover in a tent in field at a friend's farm. After much Southern Comfort (so much so I have barely touched it since) we rode down the hard shoulder of the A1 on his moped (he had it for getting around the farm) to get snacks. I was on the back (no helmet) and the person riding it had a leg in full plaster.

The following morning we woke to a sheep in the tent too.

Happy days.

Don't think I told my parents though LOL!

I was allowed wine with meals and small glasses of alcohol at home from the age of about 5-6. Never used as a reward or allowed to be tipsy but was never forbidden.

I'd be happy for my kids to do the same but neither of them like the taste or smell of booze, and they are now 14 and 10.

The following morning we woke to a sheep in the tent...

"...and that's the story of how I lost my virginity." 😆

I was given the odd beer or drambuie and such pretty young on special occasions, and allowed a bottle in my room from around 12, provided I didn't go mad and bought it myself. My standard Sunday lunchtime from around 13 was to the pub with my Dad, then home for lunch.
Neither of us got really hammared, I look back with fondness on the time spent with him.

I was probably 14 or 15 when I had a sleepover in a tent in field at a friend's farm. After much Southern Comfort (so much so I have barely touched it since) we rode down the hard shoulder of the A1 on his moped (he had it for getting around the farm) to get snacks.

Similar story from my dad's youth, ended in a dry stone wall after going straight on at a T-junction, and his best mate in a coma for a long time.

Basically I don't think "I drove a moped down the A1 whilst legless and survived" is a great argument for underage drinking.

I recon I was started on beer too late, I'd probably have drunk less at uni if I'd got past the tetleys/worthingtons/boddingtons stage of beer drinking for drinkings sake and moved onto drinking 'real ale' that I actually liked in moderation (or not, but not for the sake of being hammered).

Gary M ..stress not ..
Wouldn't allow that on a school night..what kind of irresponsible parent do you take me for.. 😆
It was a home party involving a boxing match on Sky which they all chipped in to watch ..I knew where he was.
Living in one of the remotest parts of the country usually involves a lot of sleepovers at different mates houses if they are to have any kind of social life ..its about a 25mile bus trip to his school each day and we have our fair share of weekends when our house is taken over ..the joys of rural living !

Our kids help themselves to lollies from the freezer after dinner. Whilst the other half was out I allowed this normal process to continue. Unbeknownst to yours truly some ‘mummy’s special lollies’ had been purchased. (Never knew such a thing existed)

Anyway, a few minutes later the 2yr old appeared at my shoulder complaining the lolly tasted funny but she had been a good girl and finished it.

A tipsy 2yr old quite the thing, it’s not like they’re that sensible to start with. 😯

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hahaha - you must keep that pic for her wedding day Pictonroad

A tipsy 2yr old quite the thing, it’s not like they’re that sensible to start with.

My nephew found half a bottle of some kind of milky alcoholic baileys (but not as strong) type drink aged about 5, which he then finished. Mum discovered shortly after and the poison control hotline told her to feed him bread of which they had none. So she had to take this hammered 5 year old out to the shop. Sat in a trolley grinning at everyone and singing he got a few funny looks, highlight was saying to the checkout lady "Hi! I"m feeling SUPER confident right now!"

Used get our daughter aged around 7/8 a Bacardi Breezer when out to the pub.
If i could go back to that time i would punch myself in the face, stupid boy.

My five-year-old hates every alcoholic beverage he's tried. I've let him try numerous things; he sees us drinking them and so I figure it's a good way to remove the 'forbidden fruit' factor as someone else mentioned earlier.

My 20-month son, on the other hand, is a fiend for beer. It was one of the earliest words he learned, much amusement/embarrassment in public when he's sitting in his highchair refusing water, reaching towards a bottle of beer and calling out 'no water, beer'... 😆 He's only ever had a drop or two at a time - If I've finished a bottle I'll let the remaining liquid clinging to the inside of the bottle settle to the bottom, then swig it, and give him the bottle. Or sometimes a sip of foam from a fresh pint. My preference at the moment is for really hoppy beers, the more so the better, so the thing about kids not liking bitter flavours clearly doesn't always apply!

Found out last night he's also partial to red wine. My dad and I had just had a glass of rioja each with dinner, the wee fella got his hands on one of the empty glasses and got into it. Waited the few seconds it took for the single drop to roll down the glass into his mouth. We thought he'd hate it but he grinned, said "mmmmmmm" and went for the second glass.

Chip off the old block(s), can't really blame him!

23 yr old lives a good life as a European lawyer, which involves more booze than me 😀

14 yr old hates the concept and gets really annoyed that his (quite high level league) football team colleagues regularly miss Sunday games due hangovers..

11 yr old showing signs of following his old man !

We have always encouraged moderation, but not exclusion.

Is there some kind of actual research to back up this idea of letting kids drink is good as it's not the forbidden fruit, or is it old wives 'carrots for night vision' type bullshit?.

Nobeer - I doubt it’s as it’s an emotive issue. Common sense prevails, but you know the problem with that... 🙂

Basically I don't think "I drove a moped down the A1 whilst legless and survived" is a great argument for underage drinking.

or is it old wives 'carrots for night vision' type bullshit?.

Carrots have vitamin A in them, which is what your eyes use to see in the dark. The chemical in your eyes is destroyed by a bright light which is why your night vision takes so long to acclimatize but disappears instantly. The more Vit.A in your system the quicker your eyes can re-absorb it.

Is there some kind of actual research to back up this idea of letting kids drink is good as it's not the forbidden fruit, or is it old wives 'carrots for night vision' type bullshit?.

My parents were a little bit lax with booze. Weirdly, they were JWs, too and also rather weirdly didn't like the idea of depriving us kids of Xmas. So, every February or thereabouts we would have what was eventually termed The Celebration (doubt the JWs would've approved) and we would...uh...celebrate for a solid two weeks. Within that time my brothers and I were each given a bottle of homemade wine to consume over the course of those two weeks. Nice stuff, too. But I must've been about 8 or 9 which meant that my younger brother would've been about 5 or 6. Not on, really but there you go.

Anyway, I started drinking heavily at 12 and over the course of the next few decades went on to try just about all the drugs that were available to me. Aside - you know you're getting a bit old when you read a list of drugs in some news report on societal harms and realise not only are there drugs on there you haven't yet tried, but there's some you haven't even heard of.

LSS - My mum smoked and drank when pregnant and continued to ply us with the booze once out of the womb and I haven't turned out too bad. It's a miracle I haven't overdosed yet TBH but I guess the earlier years set up a kind of high tolerance for just about anything, so no - stuffing the cat with cream doesn't work with all people, albeit an extreme example in my case.

I thought it was obligatory to allow your children to get a "moustache" from the froth of your pint. Lil j has been on it a while.
Unfortunately I now have apologise at social events because my little bugger has taken to mine sweeping! I excuse him by telling any witnesses that he's Northern European and his DNA is preprogrammed .
🙂

Let all three of our girls have a sip of whatever we have been drinking from about 4/5, they are now aged 7, 17 and 20. Neither of the eldest really showed any interest till they were 16, and from then we happily let them have a 'couple' at home or when out in pubs. If they were heading to friends we would also grab them some booze to take, in line with discussion with friends parents.

The 17 year old came to the Derby v Forest match with me and a mate Sunday. She started with a half with breakfast in Whetherspoons at about 9.30am, and then a few more along the way before kick off at just gone 1pm. By the time we went for some post match food she decided to move onto soft drinks. Wish I was as sensible.