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Drinking Around Children; Is It Damaging Them?
I was raised by an alcoholic father so I was witness to a parenting drinking alcohol from a very young age and I do not believe for one moment that the actual seeing him drinking it caused me any harm at all, the fact that he was an alcoholic did. Is drinking around children damaging them at all is the question of the day.
I am not a big drinker and only on the odd occasions have alcohol in the house, as we speak I have 2 bottles in my fridge, one bottle of wine and one bottle of blue wicked, left over from a girls night out a few weeks ago.
My children have seen me drinking alcohol, never enough for them to ever see me slightly tipsy, but they do know its drink for adults. My thirteen year old daughter has had the odd Alco Pops bottle too.
Perhaps because I was raised by an alcoholic parent I am more relaxed with the alcoholic rule, I do not see alcohol as evil in fact I want my kids to know that adults drink it in safe moderation and it’s not something we should ever hide.
I have only ever taken the children to pubs during the day or to family celebrations and if the children are with me I tend not to drink. I would be disgusted to see a drunken parent in charge of a child.
I have a fear of drunken men, I hate when the husband goes out and comes back early, or if the children are still awake when he arrives home, even if just tipsy. He is certainly not allowed to pick them up.
“Heavy drinking by parents is doing so much damage to children that a national inquiry into the scale of the problem is needed, two influential charities demand”
While I agree heavy drinking is never something that should be consumed around children, an odd glass of wine can do no harm.
Around 2.6m children in the UK live in a household where at least one parent’s drinking puts them at serious risk of neglect. The Guardian reveals. This is concerning.
I have never and would never get drunk around my children and feel those parents that do are abusing their children as they cannot meet the needs of a child while under the influence of large quantities of alcohol.