My five-year-old hates every alcoholic beverage he’s tried. I’ve let him try numerous things; he sees us drinking them and so I figure it’s a good way to remove the ‘forbidden fruit’ factor as someone else mentioned earlier.

My 20-month son, on the other hand, is a fiend for beer. It was one of the earliest words he learned, much amusement/embarrassment in public when he’s sitting in his highchair refusing water, reaching towards a bottle of beer and calling out ‘no water, beer’… 😆 He’s only ever had a drop or two at a time – If I’ve finished a bottle I’ll let the remaining liquid clinging to the inside of the bottle settle to the bottom, then swig it, and give him the bottle. Or sometimes a sip of foam from a fresh pint. My preference at the moment is for really hoppy beers, the more so the better, so the thing about kids not liking bitter flavours clearly doesn’t always apply!

Found out last night he’s also partial to red wine. My dad and I had just had a glass of rioja each with dinner, the wee fella got his hands on one of the empty glasses and got into it. Waited the few seconds it took for the single drop to roll down the glass into his mouth. We thought he’d hate it but he grinned, said “mmmmmmm” and went for the second glass.

Chip off the old block(s), can’t really blame him!

23 yr old lives a good life as a European lawyer, which involves more booze than me 😀

14 yr old hates the concept and gets really annoyed that his (quite high level league) football team colleagues regularly miss Sunday games due hangovers..

11 yr old showing signs of following his old man !

We have always encouraged moderation, but not exclusion.

Is there some kind of actual research to back up this idea of letting kids drink is good as it’s not the forbidden fruit, or is it old wives ‘carrots for night vision’ type bullshit?.

Nobeer – I doubt it’s as it’s an emotive issue. Common sense prevails, but you know the problem with that… 🙂

Basically I don’t think “I drove a moped down the A1 whilst legless and survived” is a great argument for underage drinking.

It wasn’t an argument for it, just anecdotal chat. Sorry if my 35 years ago self offends.

or is it old wives ‘carrots for night vision’ type bullshit?.

Carrots have vitamin A in them, which is what your eyes use to see in the dark. The chemical in your eyes is destroyed by a bright light which is why your night vision takes so long to acclimatize but disappears instantly. The more Vit.A in your system the quicker your eyes can re-absorb it.

Is there some kind of actual research to back up this idea of letting kids drink is good as it’s not the forbidden fruit, or is it old wives ‘carrots for night vision’ type bullshit?.

My parents were a little bit lax with booze. Weirdly, they were JWs, too and also rather weirdly didn’t like the idea of depriving us kids of Xmas. So, every February or thereabouts we would have what was eventually termed The Celebration (doubt the JWs would’ve approved) and we would…uh…celebrate for a solid two weeks. Within that time my brothers and I were each given a bottle of homemade wine to consume over the course of those two weeks. Nice stuff, too. But I must’ve been about 8 or 9 which meant that my younger brother would’ve been about 5 or 6. Not on, really but there you go.

Anyway, I started drinking heavily at 12 and over the course of the next few decades went on to try just about all the drugs that were available to me. Aside – you know you’re getting a bit old when you read a list of drugs in some news report on societal harms and realise not only are there drugs on there you haven’t yet tried, but there’s some you haven’t even heard of.

LSS – My mum smoked and drank when pregnant and continued to ply us with the booze once out of the womb and I haven’t turned out too bad. It’s a miracle I haven’t overdosed yet TBH but I guess the earlier years set up a kind of high tolerance for just about anything, so no – stuffing the cat with cream doesn’t work with all people, albeit an extreme example in my case.

I thought it was obligatory to allow your children to get a “moustache” from the froth of your pint. Lil j has been on it a while.
Unfortunately I now have apologise at social events because my little bugger has taken to mine sweeping! I excuse him by telling any witnesses that he’s Northern European and his DNA is preprogrammed .
🙂

Let all three of our girls have a sip of whatever we have been drinking from about 4/5, they are now aged 7, 17 and 20. Neither of the eldest really showed any interest till they were 16, and from then we happily let them have a ‘couple’ at home or when out in pubs. If they were heading to friends we would also grab them some booze to take, in line with discussion with friends parents.

The 17 year old came to the Derby v Forest match with me and a mate Sunday. She started with a half with breakfast in Whetherspoons at about 9.30am, and then a few more along the way before kick off at just gone 1pm. By the time we went for some post match food she decided to move onto soft drinks. Wish I was as sensible.