Letting Kids Drink Early Reduces Bingeing

Stanton Peele, psychologist and author of "Addiction-Proof Your Child", advocates parents reconsider how they teach their kids about alcohol. His position is that by allowing them to drink early (the author's own daughter was allowed to drink at home at 14), they learn to drink responsibly--thereby lessening the chance to become alcohol addicted later in life. His contention is that by forbidding it, parents make the temptation to binge more attractive and therefore more likely. A major defense he uses is that other cultures already practice this, and underage drinking is not a problem in many other nations. I personally don't subscribe to such a notion, and raised my own daughter to be very analytical in her thoughts and observations about alcohol. She's 23 now and drinks very little, only socially, and will absolutely not drink in situations where she needs to get behind the wheel of a car. Every parent's process with their own children is different, and it's an individual decision, but I personally do not advocate giving alcohol to 14 year-olds.

The full story from CNN appears below:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/09/27/kid.drinking/index.html