Please share your family rules regarding alcohol

[NewToRenting]

My teen is starting to show interest and I am aware that she will soon be invited to parties where alcohol may well be available. As a much older mum whose parents never had the alcohol discussion, I'm a bit lost where to start. I can only think of 'no underage drinking' and 'don't drink and drive' (to be fair she has a few years to go before she can either drive or legally drink).
Pls share your family rules, and I'll see if I can steal some!

You no underage drinking rule is setting yourself up to fail right from the outset. Its unrealistic. Particularly if at 14 she is already hanging out with people who are drinking.

If you can make it to 16 without her drinking it would be surprising.

21 makes it more difficult. Are you in the US?

What age are their friends likely to start drinking?

My children sometimes had a taste of our wine or beer from about age 12, only a taste though.

From about 15 we let our son have an occasional alcoholic drink in the house, like beer or cider. My daughter is 14 and not interested at all. He also tried some spirits and we talked about those being stronger, units of alcohol etc.

At about 16, with our son, we knew there were parties with alcohol and he was always sensible. The drank beer/cider and shots as well. We also told him to always call if there was an issue, we’d pick him or his friends up whenever, no guarantee we wouldn’t give a lecture but their safety was priority.

He’s 18 now and has a sensible attitude to drinking. There’s obviously been lots of nights out and he’s been away a few times with his friends. He’s had hangovers and the usual but he’s fine. He never drinks if he has college the next day or is driving the next morning. Sometimes there’s drinking a night or two a week, sometimes there’s weeks without any.

You should also talk about smoking weed as this seems to be done by many as much as drinking alcohol.

Never really had any rules. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

You can’t be serious pm the few sips before 21? Are you in the us? Many states allow drinking in private property before that age and some in restaurants etc/

but I think you need to let your child find their limits and not have this scorched earth approach. Making it taboo.

as a pp said it’s laughable for you to expect your adult child to ask their mate for a few sips of their beer.

Your rules don't make sense. If they follow the first rule, then the others are pointless, and if you expect them to take the subsequent rules seriously, the first one really undermines that, and is also pointless.

My kids are about to turn 13 and 16. We've offered them tastes of alcohol since they were little, and talked to them honestly about the pros and cons of alcohol. We live in an area popular with stag and hen parties, so they've grown up familiar with the negative sides of binge drinking. Neither of them have any interest in drinking alcohol at the moment.

I am trying to put together a message not just for now, but for even after she's 21. I agree many of these are not really enforceable and I can't tell her what to do after she's 21/ away at uni. 'Rules' is the wrong word. As a poster said, it's about immediate safety of young teen and promoting healthy drinking culture going forward.

For those asking why bother if you know they'll be broken, if we dont set any expectations then she will have no boundaries at all - so better to establish some basic guidelines for 'sensible drinking.'

Lots of good points here, I need to get my own head around giving her a clear message when we do sit down to talk. Thank you everyone.

We never really had the talk about alcohol. DC offered wine spritzer from 14 on special occasions like Xmas. DH and I don't drink a lot so set that as example. As adults dd only has a glass of wine for as special occasion as Nd often then puts a splash of lemonade in it, eldest ds does not drink alcohol, youngest DS drinks a couple of pints when he goes out with mates for a meal. A bit more at Xmas. An odd bottle of beer at a BBQ etc. I think it helps they have friends with similar behaviours.

My DH brews beer - DD helped from the time she could stand. And had the odd taste of it when it was done.

She’s had a thimble of fizz at Xmas/special occasions since she was quite little - she liked to do the “cheers” with everyone. She did minesweep the dregs from the glasses on her 1st birthday.

I very rarely drink and DH only does once a week (high end craft beer) if that so she isn’t growing up around alcohol being a regular thing. (I know a lot of people that have a glass or 3 or wine every night or a gin and tonic at 7pm on the dot. I still haven’t opened the gin advent calendar DH bought me 4 years ago!)

She’s 12 now and quite puritanical about alcohol, so I think we’re doing okay.

I just advised mine to alternate alcoholic and non alcoholic drinks. I also told them that there’s always one person that goes too far and gets wasted and they don’t want to be that person - especially when everyone has a camera in their hand. I asked them do they want to be the one that everyone is talking about the next day? Seemed to work.