I'm interested to know if anyone has any studies on the damage small amounts of alcohol (a sip of wine, one watered down glass a quarter) actually does?

I agree that alcohol damages the body but not in the amounts Ryn and I are talking about - we're not taking our kids out and buying them a gin and tonic with their pub lunch! In the UK at least you can buy pre-mixed Shandy in a can in any newsagent, you do not have to be 18, anyone can buy it because the alcohol content is so low (0.4%) that it does not count as an alcoholic drink. THAT is the level of alcohol i'm thinking of. Britain has a binge-drinking culture too, but so far there has been little evidence that occasional tastes of alcohol as a child feed into this. The children who suffer from young-age-alcohol damage usually have alcoholic or drug-addicted parents and begin drinking early to escape (as they watch their parents escape) from their miserable reality.

How does any parent justify giving a drug to their child???
How do you justify to your child that YOU take the drug? I don't like "do as i say, not as i do" because in my experience it erodes respect. If you want your child to obey your word but you do not practice what you preach, how can they respect you? If your DH told you under no circumstances did he think your family should have a tv and then, passing his shed/study you heard him watching a tv he'd been hiding for himself, how would you feel?

Obviously i don't advocate getting children, small or otherwise, drunk, but i believe the only way teenagers can learn moderation is to practice it. If DD goes to a party age 16 and some unscrupulous lad is pouring her a drink i want her to know from ONE SIP that there's too much alcohol in it and she needs to tip it away and pour herself a new one. I can't always be there to say "Don't drink that" so i need to make sure her internal workings can cope with situations where there is alcohol. It would be great to live in a world where none of our children had to worry about being in situations where they need to think about sex, alcohol, drugs, crime. I do not live in that world. Yes DD is a child just now, but i'm not teaching her how to cope as a child, she already knows that. I'm teaching her to cope as an adult.

At the moment i never drink, even one, when DD is solely in my care (which she is most of the time) and when i do begin drinking around her (when she's bigger) i will allow her a taste if she wants one because i know she'll dislike it - alcohol is an aquired taste (not alcopops but then who actually drinks those? We don't eat dinner on a playground roundabout so we can't drink them ) but as she grows sure, i'll let her experience and talk about alcohol. I'll discuss excess, alcoholism, safety.

Lot's of young people do use alcohol as a social or emotional crutch and some of those people sadly go on to be alcoholics. I would far rather raise her not to NEED crutches than try and fail to keep a specific crutch away from her.

Bec