by Matthew Garrett

Created on: April 14, 2009

As a teenager taking Psychology, this is a prime question for me to answer. Letting a child sip beer, wine, or alcoholic drinks is an extremely BAD idea. It's much the same as giving a kid medicine saying it's candy. Then, what do they do? Go and grab some and try for themselves! So imagine a child taking a sip of a wine cooler, and enjoying the taste. What do you say? "Well, Bobby, if you have too much, you get really sick!"

"But... mommy and daddy have two bottles at one sitting... I wonder if I could!"
Then they go and try it. Then the parents check in on the kid watching T.V. and notice he's pretty drunk, and slurring "My tummy feels bad". Then they vomit all over you.
Then guess who gets to be the driver when the kid needs to go to the hospital because he's got alcohol poisoning and can't stop throwing up? You! Fun, huh? Sounds like a ball.

Then, what happens next? They develop the habit and you can't do anything about it. You try to stop them but deep down you live with the guilt of knowing that they're hurting themselves because of you. You really do not want that to happen. You get to pay for their habit, pay for their recovery, and all that fun stuff. So before you let your kid take a sip of your drink, you should really consider where it could go from there. Weigh the possibilities, and please avoid the bumpy road you'll be setting them out on. It's in the best interest of the child and of you. The effect will snowball and eventually could be a huge problem rearing it's ugly face in yours.

A smart idea is to use something that tastes awful and put it in the beer can, so the child associates the beer with disgusting. My dad did this for me and said that when you're older it tastes a lot better and that I should never have any until I'm 25. Obviously, I know better NOW, but that worked for the first few years of my cognitive development, so I grew up knowing it was a big no-no and it has worked great for me so far. Also, I look at the kids at school who drink, and they're SO lame. I can't stand them, and I associate the two. This might not work all the time, but was a solid way of getting me not to drink, so it's just a suggestion.

Drinking is a bad idea regardless of who is doing it. But children's bodies can't take the alcohol like adult's bodies can, and so it's even more harmful for the kid to be taking drinks than it is for parents. Think ahead, and don't put your children through the whole process of Alcoholism.

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