Does your 15-year-old teen drink socially?

[Shallowhallowpool]

DC is Year 10. Doing well at school. Does lots of team sports. An age appropriate pain in the butt, but overall great kid.

This academic year he's also started going out a lot more. Hanging with a big group. Parties. Parks. people's houses.

I know he drinks - he tells us - when he goes to parties or hangouts. He comes home mostly and he's not drunk. He says he has a couple of beers - but that they all drink. It's not all the time - at all. Every few weeks?

He swears he doesn't vape - he likes his sports too much - and I know he's tried weed because it didn't agree with him.

I guess my question is - how many Year 10 students drink socially? I try to be quite firm with boundaries, but also open so he'll talk to us about stuff. Just curious about others.

My 14 year old doesn’t her 14 year old cousins and 16 year old do. It’s a private school and a big party culture. Ridiculous.

My older one did and the younger one does. Not lots and not often, but sometimes they drink/drank at parties at 15.

Sooo much less than my friends and I did 😳

I have found the opposite - my y11 does not drink, and neither do his friends, but I definitely was (and clubbing) at their age.

Mine didn’t.

I’m quite surprised so many do tbh, perhaps it’s different for different areas.

I was definitely drinking (and the rest) at the age but kids seem to mature slower these days and less seem to be interested in going out and getting wasted.

You couldn’t stop him if you tried so why bother?

My view has always been that teens will be teens. I have told my own about my teenage capers of throwing up in front of the boy I had a major crush on in the park after drinking a litre of cider. I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t assume they were doing the same.

I have a few rules. They can drink, I don’t care. But I buy it for them (after I found out DD and her friends were buying dodgy vodka from a back street shop). They are to be sensible. I must take them to the party and pick them up. After a party they can have friends back to stay here but they are not allowed to sleep over at other friends houses. Any problems with them or any of their friends, they are to call me immediately.

That way I’m on hand if they are ever seriously drunk, which did happen on a few occasions.

The novelty wore off pretty soon. By year 11 they would have a can of beer or a glass of wine but nothing more. They discovered that being so drunk you are sick and making a fool of yourself in front of the opposite sex was not actually that appealing.

It could be a private school thing actually. My kids were invited to huge house parties most weekends in year 10. So many kids had very large, empty houses or parents that didn’t care if they threw a house party with 80+ guests.

I feel the same and my children didn’t drink alcohol until much older. I have 3 grandsons, 2 in their 20s and a 16 year old who hardly drink alcohol if at all.
Maybe it is down to the friendship groups they have.

I don’t know any one who goes to private school and I don’t know hardly any 15yos that drink alcohol, so it could very well be a private school thing.

I think many of the state school students don’t tend to ‘hang around’ the streets as much any more and they don’t tend to have house parties, especially ones where their parents have alcohol in or have the pocket money to buy it.

Certainly for DS 16th which was held here, lots of them brought alcohol. Lager, cider, cheap fizzy bubbles no hard liquor as far as I'm aware. The girls (yup, just the girls) bought an amazing cake that put mine to shame, a trifle, platters of fruit and chocolate dips...these were excellent people, not people who needed a drink to socialise. Catholic state school.

My 15 yo doesn’t drink or vape - not interested in either and is very sporty.

My older one used to take drinks to parties and his mates houses in 6th form so 16-18 and was in pubs with fake id at 17.

it seems to be around 16 that most start to drink round here, the vaping starts much earlier!

3 of them, no. Last one is still 14 and hasn't yet.

My 19, 17 and 15 year old's don't. My inlaws were very disappointed when my eldest turned 18 as they all fought over who was going to buy him his first alcoholic drink and he said he didn't want one. They are going to be even more disappointed in a couple of weeks when my 2nd ds turns 18. They will offer to buy him and his friends beer but none of them drink alcohol. At least with ds1 they got to buy his friend a beer.

Forgot to add that from what my sons say, many of the teenagers they know don't drink. A lot of them vape though. When I was young it was the other way round, lots of us drank but not many smoked.

In my experience, it all depends on the peer group and how susceptible they are to peer pressure. Peer group drinks, they will try. They may then continue or abort. Peer group doest drink, they won't try.

It's definitely more prevalent at private schools than state schools.

I’m shocked at all the teenagers that don’t drink (or pretend not to), I feel like when I was a teenager everyone did, not that I ever told my parents.

I did read something a while ago, along the lines of young people aren’t drinking/clubbing as much anymore as it’s to expensive, not sure how true it is.

Everyone seems so chill about drinking.
My 15 year old doesn't and I'd feel really uneasy if I suspected they might. I did drink socially at quite a young age, used to get pretty drunk, was taken advantage of on a regular basis (groping, compelled snogs etc) so it was a relatively short-lived phase, and I've not looked back. My DC haven't grown up around alcohol so have no expectations or role models -for better or for worse.

I drank from around 15 i think and smoked weed
Was fun times

We were the hang out house with our elder 3 (now 26, 25 & 25) and alcohol was a bone of contention as there was a huge kids drinking/hanging out by the river issue when they were younger. After a lad slightly older than ours drowned a couple of us got together to work out how we were going to handle it.

The upshot became that once a month or so they could have alcohol at a party held here (or one other house, but usually here). There were strict rules though - single serve drinks only (bottle or can of beer/cider, can of cocktail etc) no large bottles of spirits or shared ones. Max 4 drinks each only. No sharing/swapping. No alcohol if your parent didn’t verbally confirm to me (or the other parent) that you were allowed. And absolute draconian punishments if caught drinking elsewhere or breaking the rules.

The biggest issue I ever had was a parent who was adamant that her child was allowed a bottle of vodka and thought it ridiculous that I said “that’s fine, but not in my house”.

Of the 3 of them now one drinks socially occasionally, one doesn’t at all because of medication and the other somehow developed a taste later for ridiculously expensive red wine so has that when it can be afforded.

I do think there’s been a big change in teens though. My current 14yo has no interest in alcohol and there hasn’t been a single “x got really drunk” story. Other parents are also much stricter now about phones, which is helpful as it used to feel like an uphill battle (even on here I was called ridiculously OTT). Porn and sex are a bigger issue with this cohort than the older kids though, and tbh I think I’d prefer the alcohol thing again. I hate that various things he saw on the school bloody bus had to be explained to my DS as absolutely not frigging normal in sex.

No mine didn’t. He had a good group of friends but he didn’t do that. His first real drinking was post GCSE.

Thanks for your input. It makes for interesting reading - there’s def more of a drinking culture where we are, or the groups DC hangs with

Not my Y10 but she tells me the occasional gossip of those in her year who do (overdoing it stories). Each kid is different. I got drunk first time at 15 on a school trip to France. Lots of vomiting on the coach back to school. Ahh those were the days. Your kid sounds quite sensible.

With my DC they didn't get into drinking in Year 10 but social meet ups definitely started revolving around alcohol in Year11 (unfortunately before not after GCSEs!) What I would say is that some of my DCs friends were more into drinking/parties/& probably other sorts of experimentation than others. A casual observation is that the ones who took school less seriously were more likely to be partying more!

What nonsense! I drank socially at that age at parties and even shock horror at gigs and night clubs. My life was fine and I'm a fully functioning member of adult society

I have a 16 yr old in year 11 and he doesn't drink. None of his friends do either, but other kids in their year definitely do.

Eldest is now 18 but was regularly attending parties with alcohol from year 9. Nothing major but a couple of cans/bottles. It gradually increased during years 10 snd 11. Still loves going out, clubs, parties, festivals etc.

Second child, 15 (year 10) has no interest. Very sporty and health conscious. Does attend the odd party but doesn’t drink. Prefers to attend sports clubs/gym/footie in the park.

I think they are just all different, we certainly haven’t parented our two differently or imposed rules on one more than the other but they are very opposite characters with separate interests. Both are generally sensible and well behaved in however they choose to enjoy themselves.

All we can do is advise and place appropriate boundaries for our children as teenagers. Then of course be there to clean up any potential mess (literally sometimes!)