Teenage Drinking

I've lost count of the number of odd glances I get from people when we're talking about teenage drinking and why we should or shouldn't allow our children to drink in the house.

Well, I do allow my daughter to drink in the house.  Primarily so she won't be suddenly let off the leash when she's 18, having for years been so eager to get into the pub and taste the nectar that has teenagers all over the world throwing up and ending up in hospital.  Also, so I can keep my eye on how much she wants to have a drink.  The last four-pack of Breezers I bought for her lasted 7 months.

I can't keep my eye on her all the time, I know that.  I'm fortunate that she doesn't feel the need to spend her evenings with local kids; she'd much rather communicate with her out-of-town friends online and meet up with them occasionally.  What she does then is out of my control.  And that is why I allow her the drink at home.  Hopefully, then, being offered a drink away from home won't be such the big deal, the big *secret* that it might be for some of her friends.  Not such a big deal in any way, perhaps.  

Neither I nor my husband drink to excess.  It's not very often we drink at all, but when we do it's in the house and it's so infrequent that it's a bit of an event.  When we have a drink our daughter may or may not join us.  She has the choice and she knows from our behaviour that getting drunk not a pre-requisite to socialising, and she knows that she doesn't have to knock as much of it back as possible just to feel happy and have a good time.  In fact, what she's learned from us is that she can enjoy a drink even when it is just the one drink.

So, when she tells me that one of her friends has said it's her ambition to down 2 bottles of vodka in one night and that she thinks that this friend is insane, asking the question whether she knows how potty she is,  I can feel quite confident that our daughter isn't going to go out mindlessly getting drunk because it's accepted and expected amongst some of her peers.

I can't imagine how it would be if she went out with her friends for those occasional meetings and we'd put our foot down demanding that she didn't drink alcohol.  She's already told us that she'd tried smoking and thought it pretty disgusting.  If she didn't have at least a little bit of experience of having a drink and she went out there believing that getting drunk was a really cool thing to do, which is probably what some of her friends think and would try to convince her of, then she might just fall in with what they do and come off so much worse.

So, I'm not defending my decision to allow her a drink in the house; I'm saying that it's working for her in educating her and giving her the experience and confidence to protect herself against people who would drag her down for a communal heave in the gutter.

There's a young lady in our street who has been drinking quite heavily since she was 12.  I don't know if that's a part of her make-up, or if it's because bottles of vodka have been handed around freely in her household every weekend since she was a baby.  When parents are spending their Friday and Saturday evenings rolling around, laughing, joyful, having a wonderful time, then perhaps it can be expected that kids would want to join in.  It doesn't take much for a child to pick up a glass that's been put down for a few moments while someone dances or goes to the loo.  And so it starts.  By the time that child reaches teenage years they've already reached the stage where they could handle half a bottle of the strong stuff.  If they're unlucky.

My thoughts are children do as children see.  And if children see mum and dad rolling around laughing with glasses of vodka in their hands, it's all too plain to see what they might be thinking.

I'm not a bad parent for allowing my child to drink.  I gave it a lot of thought, assessed her character and took the risk.  I wish I could say that it's a fool-proof system for protecting children against the road to binge-drinking, but I can't.  It's working for us, but it's still early days.