Are all 15 year olds taking booze to parties?

[Kbear]

apparently my DD is the only one whose parents don't buy her alcohol to take to parties...

I am remembering being 15 and drinking cider and hiding my drunk friends from my parents

I am remembering DH being the same and worse - so we have no room to talk about underage drinking but of course we don't want our DD doing it! haha

I'm not in AIBU but you're all going to tell me I am, right?....

advise please and sympathetic hugs about parenting teenagers :) and boundaries and letting go and other difficult stuff!

my 15 year old made himself a fake ID on the college computers

I think most teens know of a shop or two where they can get drink and fags. Our two nearest corner shops will serve my DCs as they know them and us.

The difference in my eyes is that whereas I used to go to our local pub or a nearby bar and get served and be under pressure to behave myself to some extent, kids won't get served in those type of places. They have to drink out and about or at someone's house. Id rather much provide mine with a few beers or similar to stop them hitting the spirits because the environments they're in seem to have more risk.

Then it is all your jobs to report these places really. Nigella I'd tell your son to be very careful, I've served someone with a fake ID (it had the pass logo on it but it just didn't look right at all, if you are trained, it's not hard to spot a fake) and I called the manager who agreed it was fake, we confiscated it and called the police who took the ID and confirmed it was a fake so god knows how much trouble the boy is in. Not worth it really for a few fags. Also reg get people trying to use other people's ID's even though the photo is different we have to take them away to and call the police as it's fraud.

We have the number printed at work actually somewhere if you suspect a shop that's selling a lot to underage kids, if you report them they tend to get "mystery shopped" a lot. One down our end got fined a lot for failing it.

The police are well aware of which shops sell alcohol to underage children round here, whether that's directly - or indirectly through other people. They get a small fine, a slap on the wrist and it settles down...for a while. The shops in question tend to be the small, independent grocers rather than the big chains who don't want the adverse publicity imo.

The big chains are very strict. DD's 18YO BF wasn't allowed to buy alcohol because he was with DD (aged 17) who didn't have ID. DD suggested she go and wait outside but they were having none of it.

Despite it's social acceptability it is one of the most damaging of substances and I discourage my eldest by not consuming it myself and as we have two alcohlics in the extended family she has seen first hand the damage. Legal(ish) doesn't equate safety. Quite frankly there are many illicit substances I'd rather she took to a party, fear of prosecution and criminal record aside that is.

A teacher who gave a talk at the dc's 6th form parent's introductory evening said much the same thing.

Whereas parents get their knickers in a twist over drugs, it is actually alcohol that is far more insidious as far as the school is concerned.

However, I fear that alcohol is so ubiquitous in their socialising, that 16+ teenagers are unlikely to be dissuaded by their parents.

Can't decide whether I'm a defeatist or a realist.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with acknowledging that alcohol plays a part in our socialising - but we can teach our teens about safer drinking, ABV levels, personal limits etc. DH doesn't drink at all (he has diabetes and finds it just messes with his levels) and I drink very rarely ie a couple of glasses once every few months - so whilst I'm happy to buy a small amount of alcohol for DS1 for the occasional party it's against a backdrop of a family where alcohol doesn't really play a part.

I honestly don't think we can expect our teens not to see alcohol as an integral part of socialising if we, as parents, are regular consumers of alcohol. The argument that "this is something for grown ups" doesn't really wash at that age.

mrsRuff, I find that really interesting in a cultural pov. I'm a Brit living in the US and when my son became a HS student, we were told that, without a doubt, the biggest danger to our kids was in our own medicine cabinets. Apparently Xanax, Ambien and Ritalin all have a whole new price on their heads, despite being very different and very scary drugs.

It's interesting in that kids will gravitate to the "drug" they can get easiest.

I went to a talk from the Amy Winehouse foundation at school. They opened by saying we, the British, have become a nation of pill poppers - with an alarming number of kids surveyed taking paracetamol freely for headaches without heeding dosage limits. The advice was to train your kids to always read the label in the hope they would learn to pay attention to what they take, and maybe when someone offers them an unlabelled pill to be more cautious. Also to keep an eye on your own medicine cabinet - as thezee says, these are drugs that are easily available.
The speaker cited legal highs as the biggest problem now, as is there are new ones constantly emerging , and kids perceive ' legal ' as safe. He showed us a sachet called 'Gogaine' which you can buy at our nearest Texaco, labelled 'not for human consumption'. Google it !