How secure is your liquor/beer/wine? Story from my childhood, and what would happen now?
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Anonymous
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With teens/tweens in the house do you keep your alcohol under lock and key? Or is it somewhere easily accessible?
For some reason today I was reminded of an incident that happened when I was in 8th grade (late 1980's.) One of my classmates "Heather" showed up to school DRUNK. She was acting all weird and confused and couldn't walk straight/keep her head up. She got called to the office and later as i was walking past could see her dad in there, talking to the principal. She was suspended for several days. Later that day we found out the story of what happened (how she got drunk that morning.) She used to walk to the bus stop with another girl from our school ("Jen.") That morning, Heather showed up at Jen's house to walk to the bus stop several minutes earlier than normal. Jen was still getting dressed so she was in her room while Heather waited in the living room. Heather called out to Jen "Hey, is it ok if I have something to drink?" and Jen replied "sure!" (thinking that Heather was just going to have some orange juice or milk.) Nope, turned out Heather had spotted Jen's parents' liquor cabinet and helped herself. I guess Jen didn't notice right away, or maybe she did but just didn't know what to do? But once Jen was finished getting dressed they left for the bus stop--apparently Heather was able to get on the bus ok without being too obviously drunk that the bus driver noticed. I don't know if there were any repercussions for Jen's parents...and this was back in the 80s. But if something like this happened now, would Jen's parents be held legally/criminally responsible? They weren't home when this happened, and Jen had never drank the alcohol before--so they probably didn't even consider that another kid, that typically was never in a room alone in their house, would have had some. |
Anonymous
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We have a small number of alcoholic items in the house most of the time, not locked up or anything. I will say that when my dd had a party I made sure there wasn't ANYTHING in the house tho.
To your second question - I don't know the answer to that. Obviously if somebody provides alcohol to a minor they are committing a crime and also legally responsible for any consequences. But if the kid is in hour house and just helps themself? I dunno. It's not a legal requirement that alcohol be kept in a locked cabinet or anything. |
Anonymous
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How could the parents be held legally responsible? It’s not a law that you keep alcohol locked up in your own house...If the parents were home at the time and/or gave the alcohol to the kids/allowed them to drink it, that’s different.
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Anonymous
When I was around 8-9, I would play at this friend's house and her parents had chocolate liquor - we would sneak and put some on the cap and drink it (one each). My mother also made fruit liquor sometimes and sometimes I would take a little sip. That is the extent of my childhood alcohol adventures
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Anonymous
This. Though I think someone should have looked into Heather's home life. Not normal for an 8th grader to decide to get herself an alcoholic drink while waiting for her friend to get ready. |
Anonymous
| There's nothing kept in the house, so no issues. If I'm hosting a dinner or party, I get a finite amount, just enough to allow each person who I know will want a drink. There usually is a very small amount leftover, and I send it home with someone. |
Anonymous
| This is going to be very much dependent on whether there is a history of alcoholism and alcohol abuse in your family. I know in my family liquor was kept unlocked and free and I had no temptation to use it privately or abuse it. My husband was a teenage alcoholic who drank a fifth of vodka a day by the time he was 19, from his parents and cousin's houses. It's not possible to predict or have one rule about this. Know your family history and know your child. |
Anonymous
| I would clean out basement refrigerator when my teens would have a group of kids to visit. I would move beer cans and wine to my bedroom closet or lock in trunk of my car. Even if kids wouldn’t drink in your house, they might take a few cans of beer out of the house. Avoid the temptation. |
Anonymous
| We don't have alcohol in the house because we aren't Stepford Families from the 1950s |
Anonymous
That's such an odd answer to me. |
Anonymous
| Mine is out in the open. Probably why my 17 and 15 yos don't touch it. Yes, I know the water trick. |
Anonymous
+1 Wtf does that statement even mean? |
Anonymous
| OP I think this is drawing a severely disproportionate amount of teetotalers to this question. FWIW we have a ton of booze in the house for 2 adults and we aren't even huge drinkers but we both like trying specialty cocktails so we seem to have a lot of random bottles where you need 1/2 ounce of like 3 kinds of rum or liqueurs or whatever mixed in so it will literally take forever to go through those. We both enjoy wine so we have a rack of wines semi-stocked at most times and a fridge with some seasonal beers in it most of the time. We only drink a couple of drinks each 1 or day days a week at most (we have friends who drink WAY more and I still consider all of them social drinkers, none of them have issues, etc.). My own whole family has wine with dinner, its just what they grew up with in Italy and Spain. It never occurred to me that daily drink was some sort of moral issue? |
Anonymous
Same except my kids are 15 and 20. We've never had a problem with anything missing. I also grew up like this and I never drank from my parents liquor cabinet. |
Anonymous
Well, we have alcohol in the house because we can drink responsibly. |