Well that surprised me

I can't see any harm in introducing older children to alcohol in the home, but doubt it makes any difference to their future relationship with it. People don't actually have to learn to drink at all. According to a survey this year, 29% of UK 16- to 24-year olds were non-drinkers in 2015, up from 18% in 2005. Why encourage them to drink if some of them will never want to?

Yes, we have a reputation for binge drinking and bad behaviour on nights out, but other European countries who are perceived as being oh so civilised in their drinking habits often have much higher levels of alcohol consumption, drink driving and alcohol related illnesses.

I'm speaking here as someone who certainly likes a drink myself, so not being judgemental!

librarylady, FYI, when I was in hospital with my children in the early 80s, breastfeeding mums were given a bottle of stout every evening on the NHS and encouraged to drink it even if they didn't like the taste. Times change.

goose1964

Silly me, I meant Shortlegs - though goose was funny too!

Seventy years ago my sister was given Guiness when in hospital after the birth of her baby.
When we were children if we had a cold my mother would give us hot milk with whisky. She was advised by her doctor to drink a glass of Guiness a day which she did until she died at the age of 95. We children were given a little and I, nearly 96 still enjoy my daily glass.

So that's how you do it, Bijou .
My husband has just started with a can of Guiness a day, I'll tell him that you recommend it.

Baggs Where does that leave smoking where children are especially in their own homes?

In the days when water was undrinkable in the summer, or even all year round, it was used for brewing beer. However, the alcohol content in beer for everyday use in most countries was only somewhere around 3 to 5% and children in those days did drink it.

I'm not saying it was good for them though.

As a child I saw my parents and their friends drink a beer or a glass of wine with a meal, or perhaps a gin and tonic or something similar in the course of an evening if there were visitors.

At about the age of 12 my mother offered me a sip of her sherry and I thought it tasted revolting, two years later I tried it again and liked the taste, but I don't think I was offered a full glassful until I was sixteen.

I do feel that giving a child of five anything alcoholic is wrong, unless it is done to satisfy their curiosity. I can't imagine that any child that age would enjoy beer or wine, but the taste should not be encouraged.

That said it is very difficult indeed to enforce laws about what people may not do in their own homes for obvious reasons.

Nowadays, most cough medicine etc. do not contain either alcohol or opium, both of which were commonly used earlier on. Any that do is marked not to be used for children. So we have come quite a long way preventing children being harmed by alcohol, but there is still work to be done,

Changing peoples' attitudes is hard, but more likely to prevent children being exposed to alcohol and other harmful substances than making laws about it, in my opinion.

Thirty-seven years ago in an Edinburgh hospital where DD1was born, I was offered Guinness as a post birth 'fortifier'. I don't remember being offered it twenty months later when DD2 arrived.

I don't think the issue is about encouraging kids to drink alcoholic drinks, but rather about allowing them a little if they show an interest. We have a photo of DD3 with her fingers in MrBaggs's champagne glass when she was about two. I've no idea if she licked them afterwards. If she did it seems to have put her off alcoholic drinks from that moment.

On a philosophical level (quasi or otherwise), it's always worth remembering that a thing's being illegal does not necessarily make it wrong just as all wrong things are not necessarily illegal.

I think allowing children occasional little sips of alcoholic drinks is not wrong.

Better for them than dirty water though, grandtante, n'est-ce pas?

My parents gave us a diluted glass of wine with Christmas dinner they thought it was good for us half my family on both sides were a bunch of foreigners who thought nothing of giving children wine and laced everything with garlic and worse at a time when Oxo cubes were deemed all you needed in seasoning

Dearie me, TerriBull. Those foreign notions!

Indeed FarNorth, I thought some of them were bordering on eccentric and I definitely thought my paternal grandfather was bonkers, when I was growing up, but that's because when you're a child you just want to be like everyone else I'd appreciate him now of course

How interesting to hear other Guinness on prescription stories. My burden of guilt is lifted!
Librarylady,my oldest child is perfectly healthy. Thank you for enquiring!!

I remember that I was allowed the 'odd nip' with a meal as a child at Christmas.
It didn't turn me into an alcoholic - I think there are other reasons why this terrible addiction happens.
OTOH there was more ignorance about drinking - there was a 'yard of ale' competition at a pub and my parents asked if I'd like to have a go (I would have been mid-teens) but I declined. Just as well I think.

A sip of cider at three years old, really is a step too far.
I’m quite shocked that someone would want to do that.

I agree that young children should not be given alcohol but when our son was very little we used to let him have a finger dip into our glass and that way he grew up knowing it tasted disgusting (to him) and it was not something special. Of course that has all changed now!

Give them alcohol?! I never gave my children alcohol and my daughter would never ever give it hers! She doesn’t even give them juice for heavens sake! I don’t actually drink it myself, haven’t done for years and I don’t agree with the emphasis put on it in our society. It shouldn’t be seen as the norm and required for every social occasion and,giving it to children even at 10+ certainly would give them this impression. It is a scourge in this country, causing a strain on the NHS and the emergency services, invoking domestic violence and is a silent killer of the wine drinking middle classes. Phew sorry! Don’t get me started! ?

Come Christmastime, Grandfather would lace our morning cuppa with 'a wee drop of something (it was whisky) to warm you'. We thought it was horrible.... But well, it was Christmas.

Whilst it is not specifically illegal, giving a 5 year old a significant amount of alcohol would still come under more general child abuse or neglect laws.

We all probably had alcohol as babies, gripe water has alcohol, alcohol a breast feeding mother drinks goes straight into the milk, relaxing mother and baby.

I'm not sure about the 5yr law you don't hear of anyone prosecuted, but it is certainly child abuse. Most people don't realise there is no minimum drinking age, the minimum age to " buy" alchohol is 16 in a restaurant and 18 in a bar.
So a 16 yr old boy can buy wine and give it to his 12 yr old girlfriend legally.
Other countries have much stricter alcohol laws.

Enforcing ZERO alcohol would be tricky because of things like fermented food and things like vanilla essence etc.

It is NOT legal to give a five year old a pint of beer or a full shot of vodka. It comes under more general laws about risk etc.

Just like how it is not specifically illegal to leave a child alone in a house for more than X mins, yet you will still be in trouble if you sod off for a weekend leaving kids home alone.

The lack of specific laws allow for more sensible case by case judgements

I remember being about 3 at one Christmas, whilst most of the family were in the kitchen, my grandfather snuck me a sip of whisky. My gran walked and all hell broke loose.

It tasted horrible and stingy. Yuch.

Nobody is proposing getting kids intoxicated! Nobody is suggesting a daily glass of alcohol for 5+ kids is recommended. The law just says it is not illegal for children 5+ to have alcohol at home.
Too mant people watching soaps!,

Soaps? Does that happen on soaps then? I only watch Corrie, can’t remember anything of the sort on there.

Whilst it is not specifically illegal, giving a 5 year old a significant amount of alcohol would still come under more general child abuse or neglect laws.

Of course.