Busy Mums

Alcohol and Kids

Something definitely needs to be done about binge drinking. But I do not think prosecuting parents for introducing alcohol to children under fifteen years old is quite the best way to go about educating our young people about the hazards of drink.

You just have to look at Europe. France, Spain and Italy do not have anywhere near the same regulations surrounding alcohol, yet they do not have the same problems.

In southern Europe in particular the culture encourages families to socialise together. Older generations with the younger ones.

In the UK we tend to segregate our social lives to adult only venues and even age related venues. I think this is where the kudos behind youngsters getting drunk comes from. It makes them feel grown up... and growing up too quick gets a lot of us into trouble.

We also separate our social venues into places where you specifically go to to drink alcohol and where you go to eat.

If you are young it is likely that if you want to go to a bar - you will drink and guess what you will get drunk because there is nothing else to do at that bar.

Then of course they all roll out of the bar -dehydrated and hungry into the local Chinese takeaway where there is a punch up!

I think education at school on the pitfalls of alcohol is the way forward and of course heavily reinforced at home.

But will the schools have time along with all the other social education they have to do?

Well there lies another can of worms. In my opinion we spend too much time teaching our children about things which will not help them in later life.

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Labels: alcohol, alcohol abuse, bbc news, education, happy kids

posted by Diana and Steve @ 09:31