Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Cheers My Ass!

Party!Image by crafterm via Flickr Miss me? I took nearly an entire month off from whining. Didn't want to dampen the holiday spirit. But my ex-husband did something so idiotic, that I have to blog about it. Over New Year's, he took my daughters to France for a ski weekend. I guess there is no drinking age in France. Children of any age can just walk into bars and order a tall one. On New Year's Eve, my ex celebrated his 50th birthday, and to christen the landmark occasion, he gave our 15-year-old permission to drink, too. Which she did. And she loved it.

Oh, great. Now I have to clean up the mess he made and explain to our daughter that as much fun as she had drinking in France, it is illegal over here for kids her age. I know that the old saying "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" translates easily into French. But as a parent, I think it is irresponsible to allow teenagers to drink alcohol anywhere in the world. Sends a confusing message to a very impressionable group of kids.

I can only hope that when she is invited to a party and is given the choice between a coke and a beer, she chooses "the real thing." Or she's going to get into some real trouble.

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5 comments:

HeyJoe said...

Hmmm, not a wise parenting move on the part of Mr. Ex.

Welcome back, however and Happy New Year.

Lynn said...

Hey, Joe!

I guess the moral of this story is that if you plan to have children someday, make sure you don't marry a guy who campaigned in high school to make the marijuana plant the official state flower.

Happy New Year to you, too! Say hello to Lisa for me.

Anonymous said...

Now you're going to have to give her a breathalyzer test whenever she's been out without you.

Lynn said...

MochaDad,

Say it ain't so! But you just gave me an idea for my next poll question on myteenthealien.blogspot.com.
THANKS!

Unknown said...

I'd have to say this is a bad choice on his part due to the parenting situation he's in (sharing authority and responsibility he's in). However, the situation isn't as simple as it might at first seem.

Laws and social mores are different around the world (from the Islamic prohibition to the American restrictions to the European view). In Europe, children often drink small amounts of wine with the family meal once they're old enough it isn't medically detrimental. Due to cultural differences, this doesn't lead to increased "boozing"; teenage over-intoxication is much less common there than it is here, since they're taught to control themselves from a relatively young age.

Europeans of my acquaintance tend to look at Americans with some degree of ridicule both for getting drunk and for overly-strict prohibitions on alcohol. In other words, this reflects worse on us than it does on them =)