by Aunt Lou

Created on: May 28, 2007

The issue of alcohol is a complicated one. Alcohol causes innumerable problems, including deaths and ruined lives every day in the United States and around the world, but it is also an ancient and probably inextricable part of many human cultures. We learned the hard way that prohibition is disastrous! The question becomes even thornier when we bring children into the picture. The most important thing we can do to protect them from the dangers of alcohol (and other drugs-including prescription drugs!) is to make them as informed as possible. Ultimately, they will have to make their own decisions, and the parent's job is to make sure they are prepared to make sound ones.

So keeping children ignorant of alcohol-its composition, its history, its effects on their bodies-or telling them only of the evils connected with it is extremely dangerous. You aren't going to be invited to the party on your child's 21st birthday. You have to teach her what you can BEFORE that!

The problem with simplistic, black and white answers to the alcohol problem are that they've all been tried and they don't work. In the United States, we have a complicated relationship to drugs in general. The very people who are "daring to keep children off drugs" in school are popping over-the-counter and prescription drugs like candy for every ache and pain. That tells the kids that drugs do, in fact, solve problems. To them it seems arbitrary that some drugs are acceptable and others are evil just because someone has made them illegal. They need to know the history, economics, and politics behind these decisions.

So should you let your child drink when he is still a child? In general, yes. If a child learns from his own parents to drink responsibly, he will be much less likely to drink irresponsibly when he joins that fraternity in college. My parents taught me how to drink small amounts, in appropriate situations, and it was because of that gift that I never once drank too much in college or ever drank at all in a situation where it might be unsafe (around people I didn't know, cars, boats, etc.).

Ultimately, though, your decision should depend on the drinking culture in your own family. If your family's culture calls for wine every night with supper, then I would recommend gradually letting the child get used to drinking small amounts of wine, at a reasonable, conservative pace. But if there is a very real danger of alcoholism in your family, or if your family's religion is a teetotaling one, probably

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