When/if you give children or teens alcohol - BBC wants to know your views, please

[GeraldineMumsnet]

We've been asked to talk about this at some ungodly hour tomorrow am.

So can we ask what you think about parents introducing their children to alcohol? Is it a good idea? Is there a 'good' age? (Analogy cited, you wouldn't teach your 12-year-old to drive, so why would you give them alcohol?)

Can you give any examples of how you've gone about it?

And is putting out hard-and-fast guidelines about a minimum age for children to drink helpful to parents, or redundant?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts you care to share.
Gerry
MNHQ

gosh at the responses

My 17 year old might have a glass of fizz to celebrate something with us but 15 and 13 7 4 and toddler no....

17 year old occasionally drinks with mates but not that keen...

dont agree with giving teens booze - they will drink uggins anyway when they leave home etc - i will not encourage it

We let ds (11) and dd (9) have a sip of our wine or beer/cider if they ask, and have done for a couple of years. When we have had champagne on special occasions they have both had a tiny glass. It was how I was brought up, and has had no deleterious affects on me or my siblings, and it makes the children feel very grown up. dd doesn't like the taste, but ds has a bit of a palette developing (or pretends to in any case) and I have no problem with that.

I don't think that guidelines would be particularly helpful, and wonder what they would be based on in any case. My two have just been through drugs and alcohol training which seems to be mostly on the "just say no principle" which I very much doubt will be effective. We are more interested in helping them to understand risk and make sensible decisions, and most importantly feeling that they can come and talk to us about any dilemmas they may face.

Ds (9) has been allowed to "taste" wine for a few years: he doesn't always chose to do so and it is literally just that - a sip followed by a description (usually "grapy", but he has come up with "ice cream" - vanilla - and "spicy").

He much prefers to have his glass of Schloer for special occasions.

Dh is in the wine business, so ds is copying him .

We do also talk to him regularly about how important it is to drink alcohol in moderation for enjoyment/the taste and not for the sake of getting drunk. We also talk about the dangers of what can happen to you when you are drunk.

Dh has also offered the odd bottle of beer to his nephew, 15 - with his mother's consent. Again, there is a discussion about "responsible" drinking.

We really don't approve of alcopops and will actively discourage ds from drinking them. They are so horribly sweet and so obviously designed for the youth markent with the sole purpose of getting drunk.

Interestingly when I was 14/15, my parents used to offer me wine and I didn't want it as I didn't like it, but my younger (by 2 years) brother did like it and used to take them up on their offer.

At Uni I spent a year in the south of France - but only really learnt to like wine after I had come back

Swwallowed you speak a lot of sense.

thanks everyone