<p>To give people another opportunity to express their opinion I thought about a subject that came up last night.
DO YOU LOCK UP ALCOHOL IN YOUR HOUSE?
HS freshman was having 5 girls sleepover last night. One of the Mom’s asked me if I had the alcohol in my house locked up. I hadn’t thought about it in the context of this child yet. We have had no alcohol related incidents with this child. After talking it over with my husband and the Mom who asked we decided to remove the alcohol from the area where the girls would have access when we were sleeping.
We don’t drink much but I was surprised at how much we had in the house and what a pain it was to move it all.
What have other parents done?</p>
<p>I’ve never locked up the alcohol in our house. S seems to have no interest in it. (NOT a chip off either old block, I might add…)</p>
<p>Wow, have never thought of the matter. We have never locked alcohol in this house, but neither of my kids have shown any interest in it. Don’t believe their friends have any interest in alcohol either–we only have hard liquor & my kids have told me they think it’s “NASTY.” My kids are 18 & 20 now & were able to drink legally in July in Taiwan. D said there wasn’t much interest.</p>
<p>I just spoke to my over 21 yr old. She said she was never tempted but did have friend’s who raided their parents.
With my 19 yr old I made it clear we knew how much beer was in the refrigerator. I don’t think it was an issue with him either.
I don’t see one with child 3 but after the other Mom brought it up I thought maybe I am being naive. I do know this friend has had an episode with drinking with another classmate at a sleepover.</p>
<p>My parents never locked up alcohol. My dad has said that whenever my oldest brother visited home from college the “beer fridge” would be quite a bit emptier at the end of the visit, but my brother was probably close to 21 at that point, and I don’t think my father minded. I have never nicked any of the alcohol, though, and I don’t think my sisters have (though I’ve never asked). </p>
<p>If you feel safer doing it, locking up alcohol isn’t all that unreasonable, I guess. It would be easy for a few girls to drink some vodka and pour in water to keep the level in the bottle the same. You probably wouldn’t notice the dilution. I do know a number of kids, sometimes as young as 8th graders, who have drank their parents’ alcohol.</p>
<p>I would just buy the alcohol from my mom. She grossly overcharged me.</p>
<p>Because I think it’s easy for kids who are sleeping over to do stupid things in the middle of the night that they wouldn’t normally do, before my kids had sleepovers, I’d quietly take our meager liquor supply and put it in the garage, a place that the kids wouldn’t look for it because normally we’d have a couple of bottles of wine in the kitchen cabinet and perhaps a cold bottle of wine in the fridge.</p>
<p>I remember reading on one of my S’s friends blogs (S had left it open on my computer) about how the girl had been enjoying margaritas at a sleepover with her best friend. They sneaked into the liquor supply while the parents were sleeping. That underscored to me the importance of hiding the liquor supply.</p>
<p>Never crossed my mind to lock up the alcohol at my house or to ask if it was being locked up at houses they went to. My only concern was always that parents would be present at the house. Though we did have to go and fetch my daughter and ferry several several other kids (some we did not know) home from an after dance party in middle school because the young hostess’ Dad who was supposed to be watching them and taking the boys home before the sleepover portion commenced got drunk and passed out. Needless to say there were no more sleepovers for my daughter at that house.</p>
<p>We haven’t, but I do know some parents who have. The kids broke into it anyway, and the parents didn’t know (until another parent found out and called them). It’s not a guarantee.</p>
<p>My friend had a party for her son a few years back. She was such a good mom. She invited few parents over so they could help out and socialize. She told me that they would go down every half an hour or so with more food and drinks, but really to just check up on the kids. There was only one way to get down to her basement. She hugged every kid on their way down to the basement to make sure they weren’t hiding any bottles. </p>
<p>Now, you could imagine her surprise next day when she was cleaning up her basement and garage, she found beer bottles every where. Her son first acted shocked and denied, denied… She then found out it was a very planned event. Those kids hid cases of beer in the garage for a week, and brought them in through the basement windows. Luckily most of those kids were too young to drive (that’s why they couldn’t get rid of beer cans too), so there was no DWI.</p>
<p>We do not lock our wine fridge. Our kids could have as much wine as they want at home. I don’t think they would allow their friends to drink at our house without our knowledge.</p>
<p>Never locked it up but I always had a good idea of how many beers in fridge, how much wine in the wine cooler, how much booze in the bottles. Never had a problem.</p>
<p>Interesting question. We don’t have a lot, and we never saw the need to lock it away from our own children, so we never locked it up during sleepovers/parties when our girls were younger. This year our youngest d, who has a much more, shall we say, diverse group of friends than her older sisters had, frequently invited both guys and girls over for few hours at a time while h and I were home. D had told me about a few of the guys’ boneheaded escapades, and I thought it was practical to remove bottles of wine from the fridge and dining area while they were over.</p>
<p>I think it depends on the individual kids. If I know them well, I’d trust them to respect our rules and our property. But if all I know about them is that they’ve gotten wasted in a variety of places and circumstances - well, I’d just as soon not add our house to that list.</p>
<p>I had a friend when I was a kid whose parents locked the liquor cabinet.
Her brother was a problem.
He always found a way to get ino it just the same.
Come to think of it, her mother also locked up special Christmas cookies too, which struck me as an odd, control issue</p>
<p>Thinking about the friends who may come over is important, as Frazzled said. Friends could steal a bottle of wine or fill up water bottles with vodka without your son or daughter knowing.</p>
<p>My son once went to a sleepover where one kid climbed into the clothes dryer and asked the other kids to turn it on. Groups of kids will sometimes do things that one or two kids wouldn’t think to do. So I think that locking up the alcohol is a good idea.</p>
<p>And maybe alcohol isn’t the only thing you should conceal. My husband and I don’t drink, and we never have alcoholic beverages in the house, but one time when my son had friends over, an “adult” videotape mysteriously disappeared.</p>
<p>I always felt it was better to be safe than sorry. I always had an idea of how much alcohol was in the house and let my kids know how I felt about it, but I couldn’t patrol teenagers 24 hours a day, so while they were in their teens, the alcohol was locked up. It didn’t have to be a sleep over for kids to raid the liquor cabinet. Sometimes I go to the grocery store, or take a bath. I just didn’t want to risk the temptation of sneaking some while mom wasn’t looking. Wasn’t necessarily even worried about my own, but what their friends would do. This way they couldn’t go along with peer pressure since they couldn’t get to it.</p>
<p>Mr Payne,</p>
<p>Ha ha! What a mean mom…</p>
<p>When my sister was in high school a zillion years ago, she had a party. My dad came home and grabbed a beer out of the fridge.</p>
<p>Teenager boy said to him: “Mr…that is my beer.”</p>
<p>My dad stopped him and said “My fridge. If it is in here, it must be mine.”</p>
<p>After that, there were no more “teenage” beers stored in this fridge…</p>
<p>You had better secure the keys to your cars also. </p>
<p>Decades ago I was aware of underage unlicensed kids who took their parents cars for short experimental rides, although I think it was quite infrequent.</p>
<p>In today’s age, it is my opinion, based upon personal observation and anecdote, that the incidence of this and your own likelihood of experiencing it are a great deal higher than you might estimate.</p>
<p>dadx, we had an incident in the middle school 3 years ago where a 14 year old and his friends took a parents car for a joy ride. The car ended up axel deep in mud in the middle of a field. Lucky for all that no one was hurt. </p>
<p>We had an adolescent psychologist speak at a forum in our school district, and she recommended that parents of teens keep the alcohol locked up. She likened it to when we put child-safety locks on the medicine cabinet and under the kitchen sink to keep toddlers from “experimenting” with drain cleaner. Teens are explorers too, and we all know that even the best teens occasionally make bone-headed decisions, especially with prompting from peers. </p>
<p>Actually, now that I think about it, parents need to monitor what’s in the medicine chest as well, since kids are getting high on over-the-counter and prescription drugs. I wouldn’t lock the medicine chest, because a teen should be able to get Tylenol or Advil when they need it, but I’d be very aware of what’s in there and try not to keep “extra” medication around.</p>