Children and alcohol..thoughts?

[marthamoo]

Does anyone give their children alcohol? I'm not talking several beers and a whisky chaser, but maybe wine with meals?

I know the theory is that children who are brought up to consume a reasonable amount of alcohol, like wine with a meal, will behave more responsibly when finally let loose at 18 but does it actually work like that?

I used to be allowed one small glass of cider or white wine (Blue Nun, if I remember rightly!) with Sunday lunch from the age of about ten.

As a test subject for the "responsible drinking" theory I was a categorical failure - I used to mix my own cocktails when my parents were out (Advocaat and Creme de Menthe..the things that only came out at Christmas so they wouldn't notice the level in the bottle going down - and if they did would hopefully put it down to evaporation). And at 15 I got horribly drunk with my best friend while we looked after her sister's cat for the weekend (the cat ran away, probably frightened by the singing, dancing, puking, and wailing "oh God, I'm going to die....and I'm still a virgin!" )

Sorry, this has turned into a little memoire of my misspent youth.

Just interested to know what people think..DS1 is only six so it hasn't really cropped up yet (though he did have the teeniest bit of lager in a glass of lemonade while we were on holiday...dh's idea, and I'm not sure I'm entirely OK with it).

I'm on the fence I suppose - I'm sure I would have got up to all my stupid drunken antics whether I'd had alcohol as a child or not..but that might just be me

A friend told me that her cousin (who is a paedetrician in a big teaching hospital) told her that they still use whiskey as a mild anesthetic on small babies, because it's relatively safe & understood compared to other possible painkillers.

For the same reason, my childminder told me to try rub a little whiskey on my baby's gums if he was having teething pains.

I didn't do it - getting teething gel to the right place was bad enough. Anything more liquid would have dribbled all over his mouth, I imagine. I'd hate to have neat whiskey dabbed on my mouth unexpectedly, so what must a baby think?

My family background is German and DH's is Italian,we were used to alcohol being consumed at home in a social setting and were both given wine at the table, as older children.
However, when we became young adults, and at Uni we were both complete p**sheads !!!
In fact we were both drunk the first time we met !!
So, I'm not so sure if it works that well!!!
Of course, we are both completely responsible adults now, with hardly a drink passing our lips

My eldest has wine on special occasions. I know a lot of people like most on this thread, were allowed alcohol as a child and turned into p*heads when their became legal (me and my sisters included) nearly all have become senisble drinkers. I don't think it matters whether you were allowed to drink as a child. Nearly everyone goes through the "getting drunk is a good idea phase" don't they? As long as your sensible about it i don't think it does any harm!

Zebra, instead of wine in water, why not try the sparkling grape juice. My friend is diabetic and therefore has to watch his alcohol intake. At christmas he has Shloer grape juice. It looks like wine, comes in a wine bottle so he doesn't fell 'left out' at the dinner table but it's alcohol free. I tried it on my eldest two (8yo and 2yo)last christmas they called it children's wine and were allowed a lot more than they would normally have if it had been normal wine, which semed to go down well

As Zebra tells us alcohol is still used as an anaesthestic in hospitals, she's right it is. however thats under medical supervision and do we really want to anaesthetise our children. Aside from the debate of wether or not it causes adult drink problems, my point is that it is harmful and they do get just a little drunk or anaesthetised. I come from a place and time where babies were given a 'drop' to get them to sleep, surely none of us would want to go back to those days, so why give it to them at all.
I thought the suggestion of grape juice was a good idea so they don't feel left out.
Illegal drugs kill 3,000 people a year in the UK, Alcohol kills 135,000.
Please don't give your children alcohol it really is very harmful and they will be rolling home p---ed soon enough!

I was at a barbecue yesterday where my friend who is a GP gave her son a tiny taste of her seabreeze because he wanted it. I found that rather reassuring!

He's 14months, BTW.

Rainbow: I would give sparkling juice, but the kids see us open a bottle in the evening, sense it's something "special" & clamour for taste. They don't want to be fobbed off. I pour literally about 2 drops into about 2 oz of water for each child, making great pretense that it's a lot more. The kids are happy & don't know better. Sometimes I goof and it's more like 5ml into 2 oz; but again, that's only enough to let them smell the wine, maybe a trace of taste in there.