rivettingKateTaylor

Kiwi children as young as four are trying alcohol and nine-year-olds are using cannabis, a new study reveals.

 WHAT??????????!!!!!!!!

According to this story on a news website this morning, a study of 12,000 young people found the onset of drinking “goes up very steeply from age 12”, while many were smoking cannabis by 15.

Well yes, the old man might have been missing one big bottle of beer one new year’s eve in the mid 80s. When I was 12.  But age four, six, eight… I was still turning up my nose at the one sip my parents would offer from their glass.

And my kids get the same treatment. Like a sip of my wine? Yuck no.  Go on. Okay.  Yuck!

If four year olds are drinking and nine year olds are smoking dope there are only two people to blame for each case and their names are Mum and Dad.

One of the things that annoys me most about “today’s society” is that I’m doing my bit.  My kids go to school with breakfast in their tummies and their homework done. They like their teachers. Gosh, they’re even polite to them.

They come home after school, eat their afternoon tea, do their homework, do their chores (pigs for Sarah, chooks for Lachlan) and have free play time until tea time. I know where they are and what they are doing.  How the hell does a four year old get to smoke dope? I don’t even know where to find the s**t so how would they? You guessed it, their parents. Learned behaviour. They see their parents doing it. There’s nothing wrong with it. 

So Miss Eight is going to enjoy a glass of wine before dinner every night  when she grows up, just like her Mum.

So Master Six is going to have two cans of beer and go to sleep on the sofa when he grows up, just like his Dad.

 They’ll be at the opposite end of the “study” that says kids as young as four smoke dope and drink alcohol.  Thank goodness for that.

(Please don’t show me this blog when they’re teenagers. I might have to get off my high horse.)