Did you drink tea regularly as a child?

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I was born in the late seventies , growing up I always drank milky tea at breakfast and dinner and during the day when I wasn't at school.

Giving a baby milky tea from a bottle was also common practice. I have been thinking about this and was curious to know if this was a class / cultural thing or just "what people did in those days."

I grew up in a white working class "done good" family.

Yup, tea in a bottle here.
Working class, born mid-70s.

I never felt deprived and still don't. Interestingly if I drink coffee now it's like to be an espresso, black coffee or maybe a flat white. DH who drank milky tea with sugar in a bottle from a very young age is the one who loves the caramel/marshmallow/piles of whipped cream 'coffees' and takes two sugars in his tea (which he drinks buckets of), whereas if I do have tea I just have a small amount of milk. I think having not started with hot drinks until adulthood means I don't have the hot and sweet association.

Yes but never liked it so switched to coffee around age 10 😂

Yes I did. My mum always tells us how my brother used to wake up in the night for tea in a bottle! I was born in 76 and like you say it was common then. My kids are 18 & 14 and have never even tried tea. My eldest tried a coffee based drink recently and hated it

My DD who's nearly 3 loves tea. She Asks for tea when she's tired 🤣

(We Give her decaf tea and milk. No sugar)

No ! 60s born and it would have been frowned upon in the wider family to give any of the children tea. I'm not really sure why though. I started my tea habit when I started work.

It was one of my brother's first words. He used to climb into bed with my parents and say 'tea, tea' and try to open my dad's eyelids.

I remember visiting relatives and them putting tea in 'sippy cups' for small children.

We got milky coffee in the winter at one of my primary schools.

Strangely enough I rarely have tea these days.

I drank tea as a child. Working class upbringing. Never as a baby.

Yes, when my sister started rainbows, my mum would take me to my great grans house in the next street, and we'd have a cup of tea every week while we waited to pick her up. I had a special little china cup and saucer at her house and felt very grown up.

(In retrospect, although it was actually fine china, which my great grandmother though was then only way to drink tea, I think it became my special cup so that I couldn't brake one of matching set)

I was given tea by parents and coffee by grandparents from about 6.

My DC like tea and DS6 loves a (very weak) milky coffee.

Yes, I always had tea with my granny as a young child, in my own china teacup and saucer, with milk and sugar. We would have it at 7am and at 4 o’clock, sitting up at the table, with the biscuits displayed on a tiny china plate, and proper leaf tea in the pot.
I probably didn’t drink much, just used it as something to dip a biscuit into, but I enjoyed feeling grown up.

My parents didn’t really offer me tea when granny wasn’t there - probably because I was usually out with friends at 4, but I started drinking it more often with friends after school from about 11 - that was completely normal. I wouldn’t describe any of us as northern or working class.

Weaned myself off sugar in my twenties. Never really got into coffee, even now.

My teens drink (unsweetened) tea, and have done from around 8 or 9 or so. They also drink herbal teas.

Yep, tea two sugars.
We had no heating so a hot drink was always welcome in the winter.

Yes - before tea was introduced, the 'safe' drink in many places would have been weak beer.

We didn't have central heating or any heat on overnight. My lovely Dad used to get up first to light the fire downstairs. If it was really cold he'd turn on the electric radiator in my bedroom, and he'd bring us all a cup of tea whatever the temperature. I'm not sure what age that started.

Never. Born 1960...never had tea or coffee till I went to university. Parents drank Ringtons loose tea and Mellow Birds or Camp.

Every Saturday and Sunday morning in the 70s. It was our job as kids to make a pot of tea and take it upstairs to our parents along with a tray of biscuits. I would have been under 10.

no idea about tea in a bottle as I was the youngest.

We had it in proper tea cups.

I went to a mid-range boarding school in the late seventies at the age of eight, and we drank pre-sugared tea from tureens at breakfast, lunch and tea.

Large amounts of caffeine aren't great for children, but there seems to be a general assumption that caffeinated drinks are a Bad Thing, which is simply bollocks. All the available evidence is that a few mugs of tea or coffee each day are beneficial to adult health and protective against a range of major health issues. Yes it can impact on your sleep if you have it late in the day, or if you're unusually sensitive, and if you add sugar then that carries risks, but caffeine is not a poison which children need to be protected from at all costs.

Absolutely not. We were allowed water or milk to drink as children, my mother was HOT on limiting sugar / and absolutely no ‘e numbers’. This was throughout the 80s.

No.
My mother believed children drinking tea was 'common' 🙄

As a teenager I would have a milky tea at breakfast time but it would make me sick. I wasn't making myself sick but I think it was the full fat milk would cause it to come up.

Drinking tea was a ritual with my granny, my parents were coffee drinkers but had teabags in house

it involved lots of milk and two big sugars in a dainty teacup, this was about once a fortnight and I probably had three per visit

I drink black filter coffee myself now or herbal tea

grandparents were probably considered upper middle class, ie comfortable income/white collar/children at private school

In the 60s, the Sunday dinner treat was a big bottle of Corona fizz - lurid green 'lime', or bright red 'cherryade'. I don't think there were any artificially sweetened soft drinks at that time.

We had squash, and sometimes Ribena too. No juice except occasionally a small glass as a starter instead of soup if we went out for Sunday lunch. Or if we were ill, a small amount hand-squeezed.

I've always drunk tea, can't remember a time we didn't, and all my friends growing up drank tea too. It was completely normal.

1970s working class. We'd often have tea with our tea too. Like beans on toast with a cup of tea (still one of the greatest comfort meals). Bag of chips with a cup of tea.

I remember the corona too - can't remember having any other finish pop as a kid until very late teens. But we had a couple of bottles of fizzy pop from the corona man (who came on a milk float type thing) each week. Cherryade was such a treat!

I was given strong filtered unsweetened black coffee in a bottle, as tea and instant coffee isn't a thing in my home country.
I used to give mine the same in their bottles and throughout childhood.
We're a family of unsweetened, black, fresh coffee lovers.