Children And Booze

i always used to pretend cranberry juice was wine.

my parents weren't really much for drinking.

it would probably be the same as my parents: after they hit 16 or so...if you have to drink, i'd rather you do it in the house.

I think it's healthy to let them taste, find out what they like, see it being drunk respectably. My parents let me drink at friends parties when I was underage, and the first time I was very ill they were sympathetic, but also made it clear that if it happened again they would take a very dim view.

As an actual "drink", I started drinking wine and lemonade when I was... 5? 6? Something like that.

I suppose I wanted to drink beer, I remember drinking Budweiser, what was I thinking? We drank cheap cider and beer and stuff regularly enough from the age of about 14. Sometimes I think it's fairly awful to start that early, but I can't really say why. I guess it's not safe to be 14 and drunk and out.

I think I'd be more aware that my kids would be drinking or tempted from a young age, my parents were shocked when I was caught at quite a young age. I think at 16 I'd be happy enough to let my kids drink.

My parents drank wine, still do, sometimes my dad drank Smithwicks.

1)Glasses of red wine with lemonade, from abt seven or so onwards with Sunday dinner. This was dead nice and felt well grown up.

2)Shandy from abt the same age at other random times. Didn't like it as much, still ambivalent about it now.

3)Champagne at Christmas dinner. Half glass when very wee, afterwards full. Full glass famously once given to very young (ie < five years old) brother by mistake who then fell asleep on table during main course murmuring 'chrissykiss again'.

What drinks did you aspire to as a child?
i did not aspire to be like a drink

What did you actually drink regularly?
When I started drinking booze it was usually cider (K's), preferred for the sweetness and the power.

What would your policy be as a parent on giving your kids drinks?
I would hopefully bring them up to realise that it's not 'big or clever' but it can be nice in social situations. Most kids seem to take a real interest in drinking/getting drunk around the age of 15, so why not enable them to try that under some supervision rather than risk them doing it somewhere out of your sight and getting into trouble?

apparently when I was very small I was at a wedding with my parents and I ran around pouring the dregs of abandoned glasses into one big glass and then lay singing on the back seat of the car all the way home, to my parents' great amusement.

we would also get a special drink whenever we had colds. this would be either sherry or hot whiskeys.

are Irish Coffees alcoholic?

"Sandy" from Grease, usually..

it would take the cast party at the end of my first semester at university to fully appreciate the delights of boozering.

haha, that happened to me as well. it is far from the worst day of my life though. i wasn't even grounded :)

this is the opposite for me, to be honest I look back on being 15 and 16 as something of a golden age, except for being in school. I still love drinking but it's a discovered country so much, basically I'm being nostalgic. Still, I remember great nights out at underage discos and things, relationships have never been so efficent since.

My dad would drink just a bit of cognac once in a while, we'd always get him a bottle at xmas to last the rest of the year. Dad also drinks beer, maybe a can a night but not always. Mom would pick up a beer maybe once a month. She seems to drink more now, but that's probably because I only see her after one of us has driven six hours to see the other, and one will want a beer to get the road stress out, and the other will have one to be companiable.

I was sXe as a teen and my parents knew it so no troubles there. I started drinking only when I was of age (21) having since abandoned the sXe stuff. Started with wine and nice beer, the more beer I drank, the cheaper it got. I now have about one glass wine/can beer with supper each day (which still gives me a buzz since I weigh so little), maybe once a month drink enough to get drunk.

I don't see anything wrong with letting a kid have a half glass of wine with dinner or something like that.

often had sips/gulps from dad's Bavarian bottles (that shit was nasty nas) as a pre-teen

only got drunk once in h.s., maybe twice, always with cousins. didn't go down to the river to beer parties, it cost me a couple of girlfriends

my kids were totally straightedge, "oh my GOD is that ALCOHOL?", except now my daughter's like "can I have a sip of that beer?" I say no, that way madness lies

Me on the other hand... I liked my booze, but my parents gave me the responsibility of looking after myself, and I only really abused that the one time. I didn't actively not drink, but I didn't over do it, either. The only thing they didn't like, which I at times stretched the truth about, was drinking underage in pubs. They hated that, and would give me alcohol to take to parties, in the hope it would keep us out of pubs.

I think I'll bring my kids up exactly the same way I was, with regards to alcohol.

As for giving children alcohol -- I suppose it depends on how trustworthy the child is. If the child is rather mature and responsible, then certainly at ten I could see allowing the child to consume about half a glass of champagne or wine during special occasions. I'd rather not see any children of mine turn into heavy drinkers, though. There are reasons behind this and I'd rather not go into them at this time.

In some ways I think their strategy was a wise one, in the sense that they eventually decided I was old enough to be allowed to do what I want. If the price for that was them being slightly stricter when I was younger then fair enough, I can't imagine the hassle I'd have if my parents were strict now, given the nature of my social life.

I would let my kid have one drink beer or wine at dinner, if they so desired.

I started drinking alcohol on a regular basis when I was 12.

I'm guessing here that sXe is straight-edge, not as-read-out-loud.

As soon as I got to college, the reality of the situation (18-year-olds like drinking!) became quite apparent. The first actual alcoholic drink I consumed was one of those tiny bottles of Jack Daniels coolers at a party early in college, but I was so put off by enforced college drunkenness (esp. living with jocks who passed out on the toilet my freshman year) that it took another couple of years before I was ever actually DRUNK (and that was in Scotland, off two glasses of red wine and two pints of Guinness). In retrospect, it was a little odd, perhaps, that none of my friends in high school and college drank much while we were underage.

As for my parents, they'd occasionally have a glass of wine or beer with dinner (or sometimes later at night, "to help me fall asleep"). In the last few years, though, my mom has become much more of a wine fan; whenever I go to their house, one of the first things she'll do is bring out one of the dozen bottles in the garage and offer me a glass.

My parents tried to have an open attitude towards drinking, in terms of, we could have a little bit of wine at parties, things like that.

Still didn't stop me from being a clandestine teenage drinker. American redneck culture had more of an influence on me by then than my parents British attitudes. Also, from about 18 on, it would be silly for them to try to stop me drinking in the US when every time we were in the UK or South Africa, I could walk into a pub and be served.

Not much has changed.

My parents don't drink.

i had a a sip or two of beer as a kid and thought it was gross. also maybe a sip of dewars that my mom would sometimes have if guests were over. my parents did 98% of their drinking outside of the house, just some wine at big holidays and when relatives visited. my friends started drinking regularly around 14-15, i was slow to join them as i thought beer tasted bad (my opinion of budweiser has never changed). i think i always preferred the taste of the hard stuff when i could get it. i suppose i'll let my kids have a bit of wine once they hit 12 or so if they have any interest

My dad found a six-pack of Coors Cutters outside my grandma's house in SLC once. He drank it and I got very angry with him, as BEER was still 'against the church,' even tho this had no alcohol. That's my one childhood experience w/alcohol. I didn't drink 'til I was 21.

if you are a member of the mormon church, and you do drink alcohol, do you get excommunicated or whatever the mormon equiv.

I started drinking around thirteen (totally religiously condoned), and though I'd put out a disclaimer that it was always in a religious context - from around 13 to 18 I was only ever in a religious context. Mostly vodka, sometimes scotches. Wine was barely considered drinking and was generally used for religious services. Ironically, I had built up a huge tolerance for alcohol from all the vodka before I started drinking beer (in my late teens). Today my drinking has severely tapered off (from 16-18 I used to get inebriated around 1-2 times a week). I wouldn't mind if my children started drinking around when I did, tho I'd prefer they skipped some of the abuse I put my body through during high school.

xp velko - I don't think so ... I think they recommend that you pray and seek divine guidance to prevent yourself from indulging in the future, and bar that, seek therapy.

No you don't get excommunicated. They make you repent, and since it's gossip central SOMEONE or another finds out you had a wee glass of port at a friend's house for Christmas and you get mad could shoulder shaming. It's not a hueg sin but it's one of the things that really defines Mormons culturally so it seems like you can cheat on your wife to less detriment than smoking a joint or having a beer.

How about drinking coffee? I know caffeine is a no-no, but I always assumed it had to be one of the more lax ones?

You do get excommunicated for being gay, sometimes, and one of my aunts got excommunicated for (srsly) "spreading dangerous feminist ideas." So you can see why I am happy to be gone.

Yeah coffee is kinda scandalous but not as big a stigma as alcohol/cigs/(esp.) drugs.

That's gotta be the most lol thing for me.

(Just in terms of stigmatizing innocuous stuff.)

You do get excommunicated for being gay, sometimes

I had a co-worker a while back who grew up mormon and was given electro-shock therapy to cure him of his homosexuality. I don't remember if he was eventually kicked out of the church, or he quit and they actually allowed him to quit.

It's a classy organization, the mormon church.

heh my bf's mormon family has a, by comparison, enlightened don't-ask-don't-tell policy about that stuff. His uncle was obviously an alcoholic, but they pretty much were in denial about it, even after he died falling down a flight of stairs and post-mortem was diagnosed with pretty severe liver damage.