To not allow DS to drink tea and coffee age 12

[user1474221222]

DS started secondary school in September and recently asked if he could have a cup of coffee as a drink when arriving home.

I've said no but as a child of the 1970's I had my first cup of coffee age 4 after been taught how to make one for my parents

So am I just being unreasonable ?

I'd add Rooibos to that list too. Almost but not entirely like tea. Forbidding a 12 year old from drinking tea (as per the thread title) seems just weird to me. It's just tea for goodness sake! I can't see why a cup of coffee at 4ish or so would be an issue either.

As the parent to a 17 and 16 year old I'd be expecting them to be making the tea/coffee, especially with an unwell parent. And to drink what they like too. Both of my children are capable of figuring out when it's too late in the evening to drink a caffeinated drink, but you get that from experience not dictat (at least in your late teens anyway).

YY to rooibos. It's available in whichever of Aldi or Lidl has the "Knightsbridge" brand of teas for about £1 for a good-size box.

I've just come back to this thread and am actually gobsmacked to find that a 17 year old is refused coffee.
My children were making their.own drinks a lot younger than that and were just allowed to make what they wanted.

my 15 year old has been having a morning coffee for years, but i wouldnt want him having caffiene at 4pm, but mainly because I cant drink coffee late in the afternoon without it affecting my sleep. Im sure a tea would be ok though

Cub or Beavers camps i.e. At 10 got my kids in to drinking tea. Up to that point they hadn't been interested in it but came back requesting tea with sugar! It's not an everyday drink for them but also isn't restricted. Coffee isn't requested unless it's a cold one.

I drank coffee from an early age but only recently started to drink tea.

All the tea substitutes are absolutely disgusting to the palette of people who actually like a good strong cup of tea though.

I live abroad where if you accept an offer of a cup of tea, the next question will be which of a bewildering array of herbal and fruit and other "healthy" teas you'd like - many years after moving here good strong tea bags are the only thing I "import", and a lovely strong, very hot cup of tea with milk is one of the greatest pleasures of being in my own home. Out of the house I drink coffee (which unlike the luke warm tea-substitutes, which have to stew for 5-7 minutes to infuse the rapidly cooling water with any taste is served hot and strong).

If you like Barley cup and Fennel Tea and Redbush tea you quite probably don't actually like the drink traditionally refered to in the UK as "tea". The fact the same word is used is entirely misleading, and I think "tea is a word with multipe absolutely distinct meanings" - tea is the drink made from tea leaves, however the word is also used to refer to an afternoon meal or a herbal tisane, which is a usually insipid and luke warm due to long infusion time drink made by indusing other leaves or plants in hot water - a little bit like the drink made from tea leaves, but without any actual tea leaves...

I like tea, the English tea like Pg tips, tetley, twinings breakfast tea. Anything else isn't worth boiling the kettle for.

I think at 12 you should maybe let him try it. No sugar though, you don't want to start him on that habit.

My mum forced me to drink coffee from about 8 or 9 years old! Said I had to choose either tea or coffee as I had to be able to drink a hot drink in case I got offered one when visiting someone's house... (her reasoning was nuts, that's for sure) so I picked coffee as it smelt nicer and ended up with quite the coffee addiction by the time I was a teenager but if I had been trying it of my own accord I doubt I would have drunk it because it tasted foul to me for about the first year of drinking it.

Now I drink only tea (pregnancy ruined coffee for me) and DD who is nearly 6 is allowed a cup when she asks so long as its before mid-afternoon, no milk or sugar, though she won't drink a full cup, usually she just polishes off the last third of so of my cup.

My dad was from Paris so drinking coffee as a child was part of my family life. I had my first full cup of full strength coffee aged around seven (I'd been drinking lots of milk with a touch of coffee until then) and I drank it very quickly and promptly fainted.

From then on I had very milky cafe au lait and only started drinking 'proper' coffee again when I left home. Now I'm in my fifties I am a decaffeinated coffee drinker.

I don't think there is anything wrong with a 12 year old drinking proper coffee as long as it doesn't have an ill effects on the individual and as long as it isn't too late in the day so it won't disrupt sleeping patterns but that goes the same for adults too.

I know Mormons don't allow caffeinated drinks and from watching tv I see that US folk get a bit antsy about coffee for kids - yet they seem okay with letting them drink coca-cola which has loads of caffeine so that makes no sense to me.

My ds 12 has been drinking tea and coffee for so long I don't remember when he started. Pre school age for milky tea, proper coffee for years and years now! He still has all limbs and doesn't have a twitch if that helps to sway you.

If you don't let a kid have a cuppa at the age of 12, at what age does it become acceptable, then? Is it like age ratings on films? They can have a latte at 15, an espresso at 18 and a cup of tea at 12 provided they're accompanied by an adult?

Personally I think it's a bit infantilising and weird to stop them having tea and coffee at the age of 12. I know for a fact I was drinking tea from a baby's bottle before I could walk back in the 1970s, which I'm not saying is remotely advisable (particularly as mine almost certainly had sugar in it) but does put things into perspective a bit. I remember having milky coffee when I was about seven or eight; it was a special treat that I used to have at my nan and grandad's house.

you do realise that tea contains as much caffeine as coffee right

Not cup-for-cup, it doesn't.

A kilo of tea leaves and a kilo of coffee beans may well have the same amount of caffeine in them, but the amounts of each required to make a cup of tea and a cup of coffee are different. Even a very strong cup of tea doesn't have anywhere near as much caffeine in it as a cup of coffee.

Mine have had warm milky tea, no sugar, since they were 2, I think at 12 he may just be able to manage a cup of Gold Blend!

barley cup and dandelion coffee are nice.

Yeah, they're actually not, though, are they?

All these people saying no, or not with sugar etc, do your kids not go to Costa/Starbucks with their mates?
Are they asking for babyccinos?
Do their friends never come round and bring coke/Irn bur?

I must live in a parallel universe.

As children in yorkshire we were often given sugary milky tea from a thermos in plastic mugs we still have during caravan holidays and cold seaside trips! Mainly tasted of plastic but washed down the soggy gritty sandwiches behind windbreaks or in car parks with a view.

I love sugary tea and coffee but resist except with coffee on rare special meals out where there are posh sugarlumps!

If the sugarlumps are posh there are no calories or dental risks.

Years ago I read that Italian doctors prescribe a morning espresso to children with ADHD instead of Ritalin, DS1 has had one every day since about 11, he is now 18 and won't get out of bed until he has been brought a coffee, ( but then neither will I, spoiled by my mother too!).

I also encouraged tea drinking, as an alternative to squash and fruit juice as it contains flouride and is better for teeth, it also helps keep the milk intake up if they have a few cups a day.

Discussions about caffeine always remind me of the effect it has on spiders compared to other drugs.

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/CaffeinatedSpider.jpg

As kids we were allowed to eat sugar lumps if we were in a cafe that had them, we thought it was a huge treat.
It was also completely normal to have squash as a drink, no fussing over it or insisting we had milk or water.

Come to think of it, we'd not have been allowed milk to drink freely as the milk was delivered once a day in pint bottles.
I'm 39 so not ancient and my Mum was a Social Worker!

- at the misreading of my first post and all the incredulity and assumptions.

What else do other peoples children drink?

Water obviously, we drink nothing else in our house 😂...!

Dd2 used to love a cup of tea when she was about 2, in her Tommee Tippee cup. Call social services.... Interestingly now at 5 she won't touch it. It didn't harm her as far as I can see. I knew the tannin stuff so never have it to her with food.

This thread is an amazing insight into some really weird caffeine hysteria. But chocolates OK because it has fat and sugar as well and children are meant to eat that after all.....

As kids we were allowed to eat sugar lumps if we were in a cafe that had them, we thought it was a huge treat.
It was also completely normal to have squash as a drink, no fussing over it or insisting we had milk or water.

Same in my world in 2017....

Not only was I allowed to have tea and coffee but.....

When I had earache as a kid or a bad cold I was allowed a tot of whisky in said tea to help me sleep

I recently discovered that my mum used to put tea in my sippy cup when I was 12 months old. It was acceptable in the 70s.