<p>Oh goodness - I don’t drink myself, but the occasional few sips of wine at a family celebration is not the equivalent of hauling out the crack pipe.</p>
<p>pizzaface, it is in terms of relative moralism. The logic follows–if you’re not dumb as a lark or sipping the secret recipe. The fact that the parents are morons is what irks me! Thank God I didn’t have liberal scum parents.</p>
<p>helicoptermom, are you one of the people posting on the Daily Northwestern article?</p>
<p>hey dplane
drinking a few sips of wine with your parents around is NOT illegal in most states. Check it out.
Tolerance of other viewpoints is a virtue. Peace.</p>
<p>
Yes I read the article that was linked in the blog since the blog itself had no data - only their own snippet of a conclusion.</p>
<p>From the article -
I don’t think the study can be directly applied to the scenario of college binge drinking in the USA we’re discussing. The study itself states that it was conducted among a non-representative sample of people in a particular area of the UK. </p>
<p>Maybe doing the underage drinking at home will work for some people and could be negative for other people. I think there’s too much variation to say and for me at least, I wouldn’t have used this study as a basis for deciding to have my kids start drinking in the home. I focused on the health and reality aspects of the drinking issues. </p>
<p>
I agree but that’s quite different than the idea of having the kids drink multiple drinks at home to feel the effects of alcohol. </p>
<p>But to try to not get sidetracked on the legality issues, my focus is more on the efficacy of the idea that allowing the kids to drink at home to the point of ‘feeling it’ or maybe even some level of intoxication will make them significantly less likely to binge drink once in the college environment in the USA. I think the focus should be on the kid having the knowledge and courage to make the correct decisions once on their own.</p>
<p>dplane:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’re wrong if you think that a parent allowing their less than 21 y/o children to drink in the home always means the parent is breaking the law in the USA - </p>
<p>
[Legal</a> drinking age - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“Legal drinking age - Wikipedia”>Legal drinking age - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>And resorting to calling posters names isn’t exactly going to lend you credibility to help you make a convincing point but it’s something that speaks to the maturity level of the poster.</p>
<p>dplane, you are lurking on a parents forum, show some intelligence in your posts. Drinking in the home with parents is not illegal in most states. You post show your lack of maturity and your small world. Get out, meet people, the world is much bigger than your view.
Did you even read my post? Who is the idiot, here.</p>
<p>No, but in my state, it is illegal to give anyone other than your own child a glass of wine, unless you have the parents express permission. This includes your own kids best friends, even if you know their mom allows them to have a glass of wine, your niece, if mom/dad arent there (or even if they went out to pick up grandma at the airport), etc etc. Not aware of any arrests.</p>
<p>OT - After a long day at work, I came home and just finished installing software and printer drivers on a new computer – I deserve a glass of wine.</p>
<p>
and
</p>
<p>Heavens–what would Jesus say? Dplane, perhaps you should leave the Parents Forum to the morons for whom it was intended.</p>
<p>heli, He’d say “Quit enticing and poisoning MY child I lent you to take care of for a few years out of your life, for God’s sake…and MY child’s!” </p>
<p>sugar, you don’t even want to contend with my IQ, per Stanford-Binet! Who is the numbskull?</p>
<p>… i love the mudslinging among adults. so mature.</p>
<p>Ooooh i’m scared. !!!</p>
<p>The schools are in a very difficult position. They are condemned when they fail to enforce policies against drinking, but when they do enforce policies and something like this happens, they are condemned for being too stringent with the policies and not granting “amnesty.” </p>
<p>I agree with ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad who said that the responsibility for these tragic events lies solely with the person who exercises poor judgment in drinking irresponsibly. Why should the similarly-aged students who perhaps do not realize how dangerous a situation has become be held to a higher standard than the drinker himself? Both are exercising terrible judgment. The schools, though, are definitely not the ones at fault here.</p>
<p>Kids should be ignored when they don’t have manners. I personally wouldn’t give them any attention when they couldn’t even communicate without throwing a bit of hissing fit.</p>
<p>By making drinking age at 21 has made binge drinking necessary for those kids and made it underground. Yes, necessary and unsupervised. Before they would go out to parties, they would down hard liquor, not beer or wine. Some schools are so strict, those kids couldn’t drink in their rooms, so they would go off to some remote places to drink. Not every kid drinks in college, but most will try it at some point while they are in college. I would prefer if they could do it in a safer environment. It is no different than I would prefer if my daughters would not have sex too early, but it would be more important to me to make sure they have proper medical care and take proper precaution if they should make that choice. I could “forbid” them from having sex, and pretend it’s not happening, or I could put their safety first.</p>
<p>One thing that I am taking from this discussion is to use red cups, vodka and punch as examples of how one can misjudge the amount of alcohol they are consuming in a discussion with my soon to be freshman. We have discussed alcohol but never this angle. </p>
<p>Another is to share 2boyssima’s post #52</p>
<p>I’m not even sure “modeling responsible drinking” (showing a kid that an occasional glass of wine at dinner is different from inhaling a bottle of bourbon) has much to do with things. Kids – people – try things that they know are not good ideas, all the time. It’s part of the growing up process. The situation that happened here was unfortunate, but the young man made his own choices. I do think that students who suspected he was seriously ill and didn’t do anything may bear some moral responsibility, but I’m not sure precisely what the university was supposed to have done. All incoming NU students do take some kind of alcohol awareness course. The RA’s cannot monitor every student at all times. </p>
<p>BTW, I remember an alcohol related death from my NU days in the mid eighties. Some frat boy got drunk, lay down on Sheridan Road at 4 am (=major road that runs through campus), got hit by a car and you can imagine the rest. I don’t recall it being treated as anything other than a dumb move on the kid’s part, and shame on any fraternity brothers who might have been able to have looked out for him.</p>
<p>Dplane, you’ve made it clear you’re against underage drinking in all forms, and that you dislike liberals. You’ve made sure everyone knows. Shut up.</p>
<p>However I definately (rather, only sort of, I don’t need to a total jackass and come here to accuse your kids of being your drunken mistakes) agree that parents probably shouldn’t encourage drinking at all. You wouldn’t teach your kid how to “responsibly” get high off of paint or cough syrup, and how much they can handle. Why is it okay with alcohol? </p>
<p>I didn’t feel like reading all of the last 6 pages, so someone probably mentioned it, but regardless…</p>
<p>Quertykey,alcohol is a socially accepted. Paint and cough syrup is not.
Generally, I believe parents are responsible for raising responsible citizens and part of that is drinking responsibly. Thats how we roll.</p>
<p>In talking to some of my D friends, their experience on some college campuses is that there are not too many options for entertainment and social exchanges. Colleges that are in more rural or remote towns and less access to structured social experiences, tend to be breeding ground for more drinking, more partying in dorms more unacceptable behavior. it might be wise for colleges to vest in providing very good student life by supporting a wide range of social experiences for students to have that do not support underage drinking.</p>
<p>Dp,
You really have no manners. Yes honor freedom of speech for everyone, not just your own.</p>
<p>I’m not breaking the law if my underage children have a modest amount of wine in their cups at Passover. So not sure what the problem is, dplane. Let me repeat that one more time - I’m not breaking the law.</p>
<p>Ignore function really is great on these boards.</p>