Children & tea drinking...

[imaginewittynamehere]

At what age do you indoctrinate in introduce your children to the ritual of tea drinking?

hahaha, I looked at the thread title and JUST KNEW it was gonna descend into MN class war...

"On the left, lentil weaving guardianistas who might give a teeny bit of fennel and rooibos when Esme has a poorly tummy, administered in a doidy cup...

And on the right, proper salt of the earth trackie wearing Croydon facelifter mainlining milky sugary tea at bedtime in a bottle until they're 5 (when they move on to Coke)"

I'm saying nothing

My 16 year old has been drinking tea since he was 2. He has been bringing me a cup of tea in bed for the last 3 years. 12 year old would rather gargle with sand than drink tea. 2 year old is looking promising for training. 9 month old - too young to tell.

You've left out the class in the middle monkey, the ones who allow their DC's to have a teacup of earl grey (no sugar of course) at tea time (as in 4pm) with scones or a slice of home-made cake.

I can't wait till ds is old enough to bring me a cup of tea in bed in the morning. My mission will be complete when he manages that!

Can't I be both? I have the doidy cup and a child who guzzles fennal and camomile...on the other hand nothing beats proper tea

Monkey, there is a middle of the road I think I'm there but dont run me over.

I really don't understand the fuss about tea and children. We make deliciously weak tea. We are on a nationwide builders' blacklist. We show the cup of boiling water the tea bag then immerse if for a fraction of a second. Repeat for 3 cups with the same tea bag.

only dd3 likes tea. she insist she has to have a proper little tea cup, half a cup of decaff tea, topped with milk. no sugar. she loves sitting up at the table with me drinking a cup of tea. she has maybe two a week.

My kids (5 and 2) HAVE THEIR OWN MUGS

mine have their own mugs for hot chocolate!

Oh crap. I forgot about the hot chocolate

two of my three are tea-drinkers. With the clarification that they actually have tea-flavoured (goats or soya) milk
DS2 used to pester incessantly from the age of 1 for cups of tea and he loves the stuff. it's from my side of the family i'm afraid - none of them are capable of doing a thing til they've had their morning cuppa.
None of my dc have fizzy drinks, two of them have tried and dislike them, the 2yo's never had any.
Tea makes a change from water or milk, and i stick by the fact that it's better for them than most of the stuff their peers drink.

I introduced my daughter to tea a long time ago. It went something like this.

Daughter: Mummy what's that?

Me: It's my cup of tea. Tea, meet the daughter, daughter, touch the tea and you die horribly.

yay! its Saturday night on MN
a tea' do you don't you ' thread and a MacDonald 'do you don't you thread' on the same night.

It's been weak milky tea, tea, tea from about 18months for my dd.
That's when she is not in MacDonalds of course.

lol MM.

Look at least we are not giving them fruit shoots!

I never drink tea so I never think to offer it to dc (6&9). All that cup of tea lark every half an hour is a pita.

I thought I'd managed to bypass it, but grandma (my mum) has introduced them all to it and they love the novelty of it - much to dh's delight who says I never think to make tea enough for him. I'm surrounded by slurpy tea enthusiasts now What a palavar.

Got to protect the tea, sorry child

As it stands, my daughter would rather rob me for the milk and deprive me of a proper cup of tea. It's a good job I can drink it black really She's not had tea, she's just intrigued by it. And coffee. And coffee-shops. Looooord does she like coffee-shops

Ds has his own mug, and likes it builder style, with the bag left in

Dd1 prefers to sample my coffee by dipping her fingers/biscuit in it.

Dd2 has not yet realised there are alternatives to the boob yet!

Neither of my older 2 have ever had fizzy pop, and only occasionally have sweet stuff like ribena/fruitshoot.

I remember that as a child I used to steal tea by dint of dunking biscuits in the tea of anyone foolish enough to leave it where I could find it.

Fooooools!

Blimey. My 19 month old daughter has a cup of very weak tea every morning when I have a rather stronger one. Hers is 75% full fat milk and as such is a great thing as she won't drink milk in any other guise. Sometimes I make her a cup of coffee, too (instant, half a teaspoon, made with warm milk). I've drunk tea and coffee all my life and never had any kind of sleep problem apart from the kind when you don't want to get out of bed which I believe are common to all mothers! I'm a lentil-weaving, yoghurt-knitting yurt-spitting guardianista and I can't see anything wrong with a cup of mostly milk at all. I see far more wrong with making it into something forbidden and weird. Tea is nice!