🚀 go-pugleaf

I've noticed the same.
I equate teaching children to drink responsibly to the American puritan attitude
on
sex; if you repress and teach people things are bad and not to be done until
you're at
some magical silly useless age, then children and people will do exactly the
opposite.

I was taught by my parents in the French way; being polite, well spoken, not to
interrupt
adults and able to talk at the dinner table if I had something interesting to
say or
to answer a question.  At the same table I was taught other things like table
manners
( my mother was very proper Australian/British) and most of all, how to drink
responsibly.
At any age that a child request a sip, to try it out like wine, beer, a drink it
was given not
denied.
As I was very young at the time of course I made a face, spit it out and yelled
"How can you
drink this crap?"  Not really, but you get the idea.  :)

Later on at age 9 or 10 they allowed me watered wine so I could pretend to be
grownup
and learn how the grownups behave at the dinner table.  It starts off at about
1/4 wine and
3/4 water, and only one glass.
Then when you enter your teens, like 13 or 14, you're allowed a real glass of
wine, one glass.
What a day that is!  You've passed a milestone and you've become a young adult.
Treated
like one.
The day my dad bought me a Cuba Libre at the local bar and we stood there and
had
Tapas at age 16 was another milestone in my life.  It has remained my favorite
drink.

I never had the desire to go sneak out and drink.  I learned my limits in
college, drinking too much
a few times, barfing and passing out, and have never done so since.

If children are denied anything, and things made secret and forbidden, the
natural human response
is to go and try it out on the sly, in secret, without a safety net.
This is why humans have gone to the moon, but the same risk-taking,
experimentation inherent in the
human genome also makes for very worried parenting.

And in conclusion, one time I was at a person's home during a big party.  She
had three little
children and the oldest girl, about 7, snuck down from upstairs and we both
noticed that she'd
reached through the stair railings and was about to drink a scotch and soda
sitting there, a very
slick manuevor since the women drinking it had just put it down to light a
cigarette.
 The mother started to get up and yell at her but I held her back and told her
to
just watch.The little girl quickly took a big sip of the drink and then this
look came
 over her face.  OoooooYuk!
 She couldn't spit it out because she'd be noticed and the last we saw of her
was
her little butt scampering back up the stairs heading for the bathroom.
I doubt she tried to drink on her own very much for several years.

mapi

"Jeffrey E Salzberg" <salzberg@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.1628c658c4249af89896e2@news.verizon.net...
| In article <8af53531.0110050611.3e10a77e@posting.google.com>,
| atoomim@yahoo.com says...
|
| > Well, most of the above is accurate, but I have known a few alcoholic
| > Jews.  We are, after all, the only religion to include 4 glasses of
| > wine (officially) in a service.  Read your Hagadah.  Each time it says
| > fill the cup again, implying that the last time you drained it.
|
| It's interesting that the cultures who have institutionalized light
| indulgence, such as Jews and Italians, tend to have fewer incidences of
| alcoholism.  There's a difference between "one who drinks" and an
| a;coholic.
| --
| *-=-=-=-=-=-*-=-=-=-=-=-*
| Jeffrey E. Salzberg, Lighting Designer
| http://www.suncoast.quik.com/salzberg