No

by Linda L Kinyon

Created on: February 18, 2009   Last Updated: June 10, 2009

Allowing your underage child to drink from your glass is akin to saying, "sure, its okay if you break the law" which can and often does lead to other activities that are against the law.

There is a reason that the drinking age is 21, unless you live in one of the few states where it is age 19. Children are not yet capable of knowing what is too much alcohol. They are not yet capable of making adult type decisions such as safe sex, safe drinking and or driving practices and more.

I work closely with addicts both recovered and those considering recovery. One young woman shared a detailed story with me. Her father used to allow her sips of his beer or wine. She took full advantage of that, but her mother wouldn't allow her to do this at all. Since her parents were divorced she knew when she could and could not drink and made sure to plan parties with her friends around her visits with her dad. Sneaking the alcohol out of the house was a breeze for her.

Yet this same young woman accuses her mother of being the cause of all of her problems. She accuses her mother of all sorts of wrong doing. One day she and I were in a recovery group and she had berated her mother for a very long time when someone made a comment to her about how they used to sneak beer from their father.

The young woman laughed loudly and told how she and her older brother used to poke a hole in the bottom of their fathers beer cans and drain the beer out to drink. They would then put water in the can through the hole and put clear tape over it. When their dad asked for a beer they would grab one of those cans and remove the tape causing a slow leak. The dad, generally being already drunk, would drink the better part of his watered down beer and then see the hole and assume it was a defect. Apparently this worked many many times.

This young woman went on to share how she started doing this at age 11. In her dialogue she had blamed her mother from age 14 claiming her mother got her started. Knowing the mother well, I knew better. I called her on it and she burst into tears. I asked her why she was crying. She told me that it had always been easier to blame her mother to protect her father. Since her parents were divorced she never felt it was that wrong. Who would know anyway?

She had spent years trying to trash her mother reputation. Blaming her mother for all of her woes. Her mother dealt with her very cautiously. If the daughter would call yelling, the mother would tell her she was going to hang up and to call back when she was sober and civil. This young woman wasn't fooling anyone but herself.

This young woman is now in recovery and slowly but surely rebuilding a relationship with her mother. None of her family particularly enjoy being around her yet, though she is a gregarious outgoing young woman. She has spent so many years accusing everyone of her problems and hard life when in short, it is her own doing. She has a long ways to go towards family healing when she was the one sneaking the alcohol. She was the one hiding out to be naughty. Everyone else knew she was lying but the worst part is, she was lying to herself.

Many people had tried to get this young woman help along the way. She considered them the bad guys. She had to want the help in order for recovery to work for her. If we don't give our children a drink we may not prevent them from being addicts, but we may prolong the time until they do which will help them to learn maturity skills to deal with reality and life.

Teaching our children to respect the law and obey it is another form and nutruing them and giving them the best that life has to offer.

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