did your parents let you drink beer, wine, liqour??

[kid a]

My dad used to let me have a miller pony after football practice in middle school.

[Reverend_Smitty]

1. Sure...

a beer or a glass of wine with dinner, at a BBQ or just a quiet night in when I was still in high school or still underage in college was fine with my parents...I never got out of hand and I never drove when I was drinking. It was really no big deal frankly

[Broken_Hero]

2. Hell no...

if my parents caught me drinking...it was to the Gulag for me! :D

[Sanctified]

3. My dad was the worst.

When we used to take long family trips in the car he would bring an Ice Chest full of beer and crack one open on the road then pass it around to all us kids, I was probably 10, my sister 8 and my brother 6. I would straight up chug it and when it got back to my dad the can would be almost empty, he would always be like, "Oh you kids" then crack open another and pass it around.

[Maineiac]

4. I probably could have, but had no desire

Mom is an alcoholic and I didn't want to be like her. Odd thing is I married an alcoholic but after 20+ years, it's finally over.

[tjwmason]

5. Yes.

Starting when I was about 12 I'd often have a small ammount of wine with Sunday lunch increasing the amount and type of alcohol as I got older - thus by the time I was legally able to buy my own alcohol I knew how to drink properly and so I've rarely been fully-drunk and never dangerously so.

[The_Wizard]

6. It was mixed

As a boy, after mowing the yard, my dad would give me some of his beer. If we had get togethers, it was a little margarita. My mom dated a pub owner and I was bar back at the age of 10 (80's in Texas)... again mixed. Now my Uncle Stabby swore by Angle Dust at 7:30 am and I still live by that.

[regnaD kciN]

7. Yep...

We spent part of my childhood in Switzerland, where there was no set-in-stone drinking age, and children were expected to have wine at meals with their parents. OTOH, "social drinking" among kids was discouraged, and you had to be a minimum age to go into a bar or get served alcohol in restaurants if you were alone. (Think of it as sort of the drinking equivalent of the "R" movie rating here.) As a result, kids didn't sneak off and drink (too much) with their friends as a "rite of passage," and there were a lot fewer drinking problems than here in the "just say no" U.S.

[Connonym]

8. Yes

Even though my parents seldom drank we were allowed to have small glasses of champagne or sips of beer on occasion. It was absolutely no big deal.

[SKKY]

9. Among other things...

...and it always pissed me off as a kid when they wouldn't give me any of THIER brownies.

[SacredCow]

10. Yep...

On certain occaisions, as long as I was staying home I was allowed to have a beer or 3. What else would you drink at a crawfish boil, anyway?

[NewWaveChick1981]

11. Yes.

But there are some caveats. My father is a recovering alcoholic, and we saw lots of problems related to his drinking when we were growing up. My grandmother (Mom's mom) was also a big-time alcoholic. However, my mother wanted the kids to see that drinking occasionally IN MODERATION was OK. I had my first glass of liebfraumilch with dinner when I was 13, and it was no big deal. Mom would offer us wine with nice meals, and we were free to turn it down or have ONE glass. I had one here and there, but I've never been drunk in my life. I really didn't have any desire to experiment with alcohol, and I credit my mother's open and honest attitude toward it. She knew there were problems, and we discussed them as a family. My father's alcoholism led to their divorce when I was 16. But Mom knew the right thing to do, and to this day, neither my sister, brother, nor me show any signs of alcoholism.

I don't like beer at all, and I'm not really into hard liquor. I do like fruity rum drinks (like pina coladas, daiquiris, mojitos, etc.), but I have them only very occasionally. :) I drink wine in social settings, but never more than one or two glasses.

Edited to add: I've never driven after drinking, and since I've never been drunk, I've never had a hangover or a blackout. :)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. Yes, my elderly German relatives started giving me wine with dinner

when I was 14, in line with the old German custom by which one was considered an adult after confirmation.

It totally deprived drinking of any attractiveness as a way to rebel.

[Auggie]

28. Was it German wine?

We drank a lot of that at my house during my teen years

[Critters2]

30. Same here. In fact, we had wine younger than that

on special occasions--Thanksgiving, Christmas Dinner, Easter, some times at Sunday Dinner.And like you, it removed the mystery and rebellious feeling to drinking.

[skygazer]

13. Yes

They let us each have a glass of champagne at New Year's or at a wedding. My dad gave me my first beer when I was ten - we'd finished putting up a fence and it was hot. He got two beers and gave me one.

When I was in my teens, he'd order a drink for me in a restaurant. My parents looked at drinking as a social skill one needed to learn.

[Matsubara]

14. They didn't let me...

...but they didn't NOT let me. I didn't really ask. I grew up in El Paso, so beyond age fifteen, it was pretty much spending every weekend getting drunk and dancing down in Juarez.

It was AWESOME!


Anti-drink/drug puritans are assholes.


I let my kids have a sip of beer from time to time, and when they're teens I'll le them have a few beers and get a buzz if they want.

I think the whole "verboten" thing is a major reason why binge drinking is such a big problem with teens. Kids need to learn HOW to drink responsibly...

[Karenca]

15. Yes -- nt

[graywarrior]

16. We all got shitfaced together.

Thanksgiving is a blackout since I was 12.

[Tikki]

17. No, neither group of parents.....

The Tikkis

[EstimatedProphet]

18. My dad got me drunk when I was 12

and then took me to a restaurant and laughed at me so everyone could hear.

[kedrys]

19. Dad offered to let me raid the liquor cabinet on several occasions

Neither of my parents drink, but they keep good stuff around because they entertain a lot. Dad's rationale was that I should get shitfaced somewhere safe, where he and mom knew where I was and I could get carried to the bathroom by someone trustworthy if necessary.

So of course I didn't drink much until I was in my 30s, after toking my way through college and my first couple of jobs. :P

Now that I can't smoke because I'm renting myself cheap to a large evil corporation, I drink pretty much every night - but won't get behind the wheel of a car (the way I used to during my clubbing days).

[WindRavenX]

20. yup

They trusted me. Also knew I smoked reefer (stil do) :smoke:

[Nikia]

21. We had wine coolers with dinner on my 20th birthday

Other than that, I never drank with them or had alcohol provided by them when I was underaged. Neither set of parents regularly even had alcohol in the house while I was growing up.
For the most part, my parents and extended family of that generation and older did not drink alcohol regularly or even at all.

[KitchenWitch]

22. Yes, they let me smoke (cigarettes) at home too.

I think if they had it to do over again, they would rethink these policies.

[Tektonik]

23. I would have been dead meat if I touched alcohol

I've accidentally had champagne when I was 5, but that's about the extent of it. I never really had a desire to drink when I was younger so I guess it turned out alright.

[GenDem]

24. There was a different mindset when I grew up in the early 70's

I was always allowed to have a drink on a holiday or at our family reunions as far back as I can remember. I recall sipping red wine during Thanksgiving dinner when I was 12 or so. No harm or foul with me.

I, on the other hand, did not allow my kids to drink. I became rigid when our societies acceptance levels changed, and now there is even the fear of a parent being charged with endangering the welfare of a child. It was a moot point in our family anyway. My husband was a recovering alcoholic when my kids were growing up, so alcohol wasn't in our house.

So our uptight society has made this taboo. In European society it is widely accepted that the kids can have a drink of wine right along with the adults. I tend to think that the Europeans appear to be more evolved than we are in many areas, this included.

[fizzgig]

25. i was allowed to have wine with dinner

at thanksgiving, christmas, passover, hanukkah, etc.

passover dinner involves a lot of wine, i still don't know that i've made it up to the four glasses yet

[Wapsie B]

26. dad still doesn't like to see me drink in front of him.

Although I remember Grandpa telling me that daddy was a hard-partier in his day. :eyes:

Do as I say not as I do.

[u4ic]

27. I started getting sips of liquor at age 4

Brandy, whiskey, beer...on the holidays, I'd get a small glass of wine, too. We'd also get hot toddies made for us when we had a sore throat. I invented quite a few sore throats. :P

I never went on the drinking binges when I was a teenager - I wasn't rebelling against anything. I've never been drunk in my life, though tipsy a few times.

I eventually found it did nothing for me, and I didn't like the taste anymore, so I stopped. I haven't had a drink in at least a decade. Don't miss it.


Coffee was the adult beverage. I was about 12 or 13 when I was finally allowed to have a cup. It always smelled so good - but the taste - ugh. I spit it out, it was so foul. I've never had a full cup of coffee in my life.

[sarge43]

29. An occasional sip of beer from age 7 or 8.

I've never like the taste of it and we didn't have wine or hard stuff in the house.

[Withywindle]

31. Beer or wine with dinner sometimes, sure.

No biggie. Mom's from Brazil, they're not as puritanical about it there.

[Pacifist Patriot]

32. Not a drop before I was 21....

Now they enable the most insane amount of intoxicants to enter into my bloodstream.

[quiet.american]

33. As little kids, on holidays, we were allowed a port-glass-size of red wine.

I used to love it. We all also "dressed for dinner" on holidays in our "Sunday best." The memory brings a smile to my face.

[bigwillq]

34. A little bit

when I got to be 16 or so. A beer or two, that's it.

[querelle]

35. Yes Of Course

My parents are European (French) so there was no taboo about giving wine to minors in our house. Hard liquor was out of the question and beer was considered gauche (by my parents, but not me). My brother and I were expected to have wine with dinner every evening after about the age of twelve or so. But only with dinner. Abusing alcohol and getting loaded was frowned upon.

Q

[pokerfan]

36. German immigrant farmers - what do you think?

My dad would let me have a sip every now and then but I didn't like it. There was no prohibition that I was aware of, just no deep desire. No forbidden fruit.

When I got older, fourteen or so, Dad would let me have a beer with him at dinner (pretty much the only time he drank) after a day of work. This was his beer of choice:



(I never did get a girl to sign a four dot label but that's another story.)

At Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter dinners they would let us kids have wine. Champagne for New Years if they were celebrating at home.

By the time I got to college, it was really no big deal. Some kids whose parents never let them touch a drop went a little wild.