Stop the gripe water, Nanny – or we'll all become binge drinkers!
So according to Sir Liam Donaldson, England’s chief medical officer, children aged under 15 should never be allowed to drink alcohol, even in small quantities. Sir Liam said that childhood should be an ‘alcohol-free time’ and that children who drink were at risk of “serious harm”. At present It is legal for parents to give a child over five alcohol in the home and there is not expected that this guidance will become law.
Our 12 year old daughter has been offered a small glass of alcohol on occasions since she was about nine. She has occasionally had a sip – and then pronounces the wine/beer/whatever to be ‘disgusting’. She does however like a Bucks Fizz and on special occasions has been allowed to have a small glass – except on the last New Year’s Eve, when she had a couple of glasses and got a little giggly. Difficult to tell if this was down to the Fizz or the DVD we were watching at the time. I worked out last night that she’s had less alcohol to drink in a lifetime than a 14 year old William Hague used to drink in a day. To be honest, neither of them seem to be showing any lack of grey matter as a result of their tipples.
According to the health ‘experts’, even a taste of alcohol as a child runs the risk of getting a taste for alcohol at too young an age. A worry for the parents of Jewish boys, traditionally given a taste of alcohol to sedate them during their brith or circumcision at just a week old (this is not an excuse to re-open the arguments about circumcision, dear readers!), or those children who start receiving Holy Communion from the age of nine. Many Jewish children also taste wine with the traditional Sabbath dinner, but drunkenness is not common in Jewish communities, except maybe at the feast of Purim.
I’m also getting a little irritated by the government’s use of bad science and dodgy statistics, usually welcomed with open arms by the media. Just because there is a link between the age at which someone first drinks alcohol and alcohol problems in later life. There are all sorts of variables, including how the child was introduced to alcohol, how often they were allowed to drink and what their parents’ attitude to alchol was. As even an amateur statistician knows, correlation does not imply causation.
I’m a great believer in demystifying life to children. Tell them that something is forbidden and they’ll want to try it as soon as they can, probably in a furtive and out of control way. Our daughter understands what alcohol is and how it can affect people, but hopefully, having never seen us drunk, will consume it in moderation or not at all when she is older.
The media’s self-appointed moral arbiter, the Daily Mail, has reported this story completely straight – not knowing whether to condemn the nanny-statism or support anything which rids the UK of its ‘yob culture’. But the readers’ comments are not so restrained, almost all quoting continental ‘cafe culture’ and using this guidance as yet another stick with which to beat the government.
Why can’t the government stick to sorting out the big issues – like the economy, maybe – rather than giving everyone ‘guidance’ in their ‘Nanny knows best’ way? The only people this will affect in any way will be those parents who are already bringing their children up to be responsible members of society and worry about where their kids are and what they are doing. Those parents who buy their sons cheap lager or cider and send them out of the house won’t change their behaviour in any way. Those of us who choose to allow our children to taste alcohol aren’t serving them with large G&Ts or a pint of Snakebite, nor offering alcohol every day, every week, or even every month.
If our children are not shown how adults use judgement and exercise control, then they will never learn to do so themselves. If they never learn how to deal with potential dangers, then they will always be likely to succumb. Putting something out of reach of a child and they will invariably climb up to get it – with a risk of injury. A child growing into an adult has to learn to think for themselves – and make those little mistakes along the way. And trying to stop that happening is why we must say goodbye to Labour’s Nanny.
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Comments
29 January 2009, 2:40 pm
I used to LOVE gripe water, I would feign illness just t0 get some! It didn’t turn me into a drinker…oh wait…