Giving my 3 year old a cup of tea every weekend..

[Mexicantahoe]

My little girl is so great, eats everything, sleeps 7 to 7 uninterrupted.. Recently at the weekends she has shown an interest in my cup of tea, tea is the only thing I can manage first thing in the morning, I don't eat breakfast but at the weekend I sit down with her whilst she eats and I drink a cuppa.. I made her half a cup of weak tea last weekend and she absolutely loved it, I have mine with Oat milk so I don't add anything further to sweeten it.. Is it OK to give her 1 cup of reasonably weak tea at the weekends? Her teeth are also beautiful, straight and white with no plaque or cavities so I hope this isn't a slippery slope. It just was so lovely to see her really enjoying it. I'm pretty sure my first cup of tea was when I was very little too!
Is it ok or should I stop?

Some of my favourite memories of DS are when he was 3 and we used to walk home from dropping his big sister at school on a morning. We'd sit at the kitchen table with a cup of tea each and a slice of toast. He had his in an espresso cup, it was the perfect size for his little hands!

Mine had sips of regular tea from my cup, but their favourite thing was being given an entire small teapot of redbush tea for themselves - they liked pouring it out and adding milk and (occasionally) sugar - the tea making ritual is lovely isn't it!

Note: they wee'd like racehorses afterwards. Stay near a loo for a couple of hours if you do this!

You cannot seriously imagine this is acceptable, to give a child tea.
WITH MILK.
Ugh, such barbarians, the British.

Here most people give tea to the kids. Green tea, oolong, barley tea, whatever.
There are even bottles of tea for giving to babies from 3 months or so in hot weather.
Tea is good for teeth, apparently.
It’s usually without milk. I don’t know about oat milk but can’t see the harm.
It’s not like it’s a Fruit Shoot

@Woolver23 - well, aside from the caffeine,which would depend on how long the tea is brewed for, which is not great for kids, tea stops the absorption of iron so if drunk with a meal it could leave the child short of iron.

Of course a weekly milky tea would be fine, though.

It’s absolutely fine. I never hear anyone worrying about the caffeine in chocolate.

Tea stains the teeth

Just make sure she's getting enough iron, especially if you are veggie or vegan. Tea (even decaf) inhibits iron absorption. Other than that I wouldn't worry. It's a very tiny amount of caffeine too, so I wouldn't worry about that. I might be biased though, because I hate roibos (redbush) tea!

I honestly think this is fine. Once a week as a treat won’t turn into a bad habit and there’s no harm in a weak tea. Plenty of people give 3 year olds chocolate once a week or more and people don’t think it’s an issue (I don’t either, to be clear). A cup of weak tea is definitely no worse than that.

My sister was furious when she found out from her daughter,aged 3, that Nan had given her tea with sugar in it. My niece is now 11 and doesn't have hot drinks. She also has an aversion to making me a cup of tea. She was a Brownie ffs

Wouldn’t hesitate

I give my son some milky tea now and then with decaff teabags.
Can’t see the harm, my niece used to love drinking it out of her dinky tea playset at a similar age

I've drank coffee since before I can remember, what's it meant to have done to me?!?

It's totally fine. Tea is really healthy and the tiny amount of caffeine will do no harm.

I buy unsweetened oat milk as the normal one contains sugar. I wish one of mine would drink tea, DH doesn’t so I am a lone tea drinker in my house!

My 4 year old likes to ask for a cup of tea. I put boiling water in a cup and then dunk my used tea bag in it for a few seconds. Top it up with cold milk until it's just warm and she's happy. I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

My mum used to make us special white tea which we had in those fashionable seventies smoked pyrex mugs. Of course in hindsight it was just milk, sugar and water. All my elderly relatives still used lose leaf tea and I hated the lea leafs- I still don't drain a cup

I’m on the older side (past middle age) and my mum used to give myself milky tea as toddlers and would put it in a bottle. Apparently we loved it, although I suspect it was because she added sugar. Seems as we became older kids we grew out of it until we started drinking tea as teens.

None of us have ever had issues with our teeth, all have great teeth (as in no cavities), and I’m the only one overweight and that happened as an adult so I can’t imagine it was the tea! Seriously I wouldn’t blink over it.

As TheKeatingFive & SilverTimpani have both pointed out, people don’t have the same horrors over the caffeine in chocolate. Mass panic over sugar and fat perhaps, but not the caffeine…

Caffeine is not actually evil; but the amount your DD’s likely to be getting in what’s presumably milk that’s been briefly introduced to a teabag will be minuscule. Even for a mini-human.

I don’t like tea (I know, I know, I practically take my coffee intravenously though) but my brother, now 25yo, loved tea when he was really little.

My mum would make him a little kiddie mug of milky, unsweetened tea and he would have that with breakfast most mornings. He’s not an addict now and he has all of his teeth

When I was little children regularly drank tea - it was no biggie at all. I used to until I discovered coffee when I was four :).

I grew up on cups of weak (sugary!) tea. My dad loved the stuff. He used to dip his toast in and I do that now too! 😂 I can't wait until my son is old enough to sit and share tea and toast!

If the worst habit she develops is enjoying a cup of tea you will have done well!! 🍵

I love that parents will happily give their kids juice and squash which are full of sugar and additives, but think a weak tea is outrageous

I love that parents will happily give their kids juice and squash which are full of sugar and additives, but think a weak tea is outrageous

Yep it’s very odd