Drinking Can Make You Sick

It was the middle of the week, my day off, and my six-year-old daughter dropped a bomb at our kitchen table. Apparently, her parents had a drinking problem…

And that’s what we get for sending her to school.

It started off with a second glass of wine. Maybe it was a chardonnay. Maybe we paired it with a wild salmon, some parsley puree, green beans, a brand new I-pod play list and the best company in the world. Maybe Rachel Yamagata was sharing a duet with Ray Lamontagne. Maybe my wife and I were so caught up with the happiness that is an idle Monday night. Again, my day off.

This is what I look forward to most during my week. Food, family, music, wine, dessert; all the indulgences of life. We spend too much on dinner, take too long ingesting it and enjoy the company too much.

 I reached to pour my wife a second glass and our daughter voiced her initial fears.

“You shouldn’t drink ‘cause it’s going make you sick.” We laughed it off. She has no idea exactly how much we would have to drink before we got sick. But she didn’t mean nauseous sick. She meant dead sick. We didn’t quite hear this…not yet anyway.

The next night it was tacos on Tuesday, my other day off. Ice waters for the kids, Corona of course, for the parents. My daughter put up any even bigger fight.

“Guys, you just had wine last night and now you’re going to drink beer!”

“Abby?! Mommy and Daddy are allowed to have a beer.”

“If you drink beer you’re going to get sick, and throw up, and die!”

Needless to say, this was a sobering moment. We heard our daughter loud and clear. She had concerns. Righteous or not, it was our job to hear her. We tried to talk to her about good drinking vs. bad drinking. Responsible drinking vs. problematic drinking. All the while toeing the line. This again, is a six-year-old girl not necessarily available to see the big picture of life. We talked this out a little bit. We pleaded for her understanding. We prodded her to find out where she heard such a thing, although Abby refused to give up her sources.

No second drinks that night, especially not around such a buzz kill daughter.

Later in the week, Abby exploded again. Only this time there was no drinking involved. We were late for bed and I used my dad voice to rush her upstairs.

“See, this is what happens when you drink! You get mean!” She was obviously cranky, and smart enough to know that she hit a nerve the other night. She’s an intelligent one, this girl.  

That night I talked with my daughter in her bed. Another heart to heart balancing the truth with her six-year-old grasp of the world. This is always a tight rope. We kissed and hugged then I retreated back downstairs to my wife. 

Now I’m pissed. My wife and I are both pissed. Who is telling her these things? Who is teaching my daughter such things. Who is turning our daughter against us? Who is scaring her this way?

We spent the next two weeks on the wagon, at least in front of our children. Like two true alcoholics, my wife and I waited for the boring sober little, buzz killers to go to bed before turning the cork on a bottle of red, or twisting the cap of a beer. We buried our empties at the bottom of the recycling can. We hid the beer in the crisper drawer next to the vegetables. And we used a lot of gum. I felt like I was in high school again.

This week Abby brought home one of her lesson’s from school. The Health curriculum is called The Great Body Shop. The latest lesson was called “Drinking Can Make You Sick.

Here’s the picture… Two teenagers drinking and smoking on the street corner. Beer cans lined up like bowling pins. A capsized vodka bottle. Cigarette butts a strewed. “Hey kids, come to our party! Ha, ha, ha,” the older girl slurs. “Come on kids, I dare you!,” taunts the teenage boy.

Younger children off to the side pointing, “Let’s go, Suzy. They are drinking.”

To get the full picture copy and paste the following link to your browser …http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyN24KJUQzU

I wasn’t present when this lesson was presented to the class. However, I’m more of a big picture type person who understands the dangers of displaying such small picture lessons to six-year-old children. I’ll say it again….SIX-YEAR-OLD children. First graders, damnit!

Can they really grasp this idea of alcohol to the fullest? Was this message extended to our children with certain qualifiers? Like parents are allowed to enjoy an occasional libation at home…Or adults have been celebrating life with intoxicants for centuries, millennium… Or countries are famous for their vineyards…. Or even Jesus like to turn water in to wine to have a good time. Or was this just a blanket message of Drink=Death.

I can just imagine these images being presented to my daughter. Her slinking into her desk in embarrassment. After all, her parents drink. She blushes red imagining her parents on the street corner collecting empties while enticing younger kids to do the same.

In her beautiful little head her parents are just one glass of South Eastern Australian Reserve away from breathing our last breath. What an image for a six year old, eh?

I don’t know why such a lesson is being presented to first-graders. We don’t live in a town where teenagers hang out on street corners. Our teenagers probably do their drinking in the woods or in their parent’s basements like we did when we were younger. My daughter is unlikely to stumble across these kinds of temptations. At least, not for another seven years or so. Until then I’d prefer to keep her a six-year-old girl with six-year-old problems.  

They say that our kids are growing up too fast nowadays and with these kinds of curriculum you can easily figure it out. Sometimes adults need to allow kids to be kids, children to be children. 

So does my daughter understand the message? You be the judge. On her activity sheet she was asked to

complete the following phrase.

I will stay drug-free because….My daughter’s answer…“I like to tickle my friend,” she wrote.

Oh yeah, she’s definitely mature enough to learn about drugs and alcohol. I am soooo wrong.