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Parents of Teengers - Do You Lock Up Your Booze/Beer? (1 Viewer)

Parents of Teengers - Do You Lock Up Your Booze/Beer?

  • Yes, We Lock up our Booze/Beer (or hide it away, etc.)

    Votes: 5 6.7%
  • No, We do Not Lock up Our Booze/Beer

    Votes: 65 86.7%
  • We Don't Keep any Booze or Beer at our House

    Votes: 5 6.7%

  • Total voters
    75

CletiusMaximus

Footballguy
My son just started his freshman year in high school.  I have to honestly say, I am 99% certain my son would not take a beer or any booze/wine from our stash.  I have literally zero concern about him doing this.  That will likely change as he gets older, but for now it is not an issue for me with him.  However, we like to be the house where kids gather.  We had all the kids over here after the homecoming dance.  I know his friends pretty well, don't completely trust all of them.  We want to continue to be a location where the kids come to hang out.  Our friends have differing opinions on this.  One of my buddies has the huge open bar in his dining room, booze and wine everywhere, and a fully stocked beer fridge in the basement.  When I was 15-16, we would have robbed that bar and fridge every weekend.

Other friends say you're stupid if you don't lock it up  - they will get into it sooner or later.

I just put a lock on the door to my wine cellar and we are going to move all our booze down there, and put a small fridge down there for our beer.   For us, its mostly about the kids we don't know very well.  If we're hosting, I never want another parent to be pissed at me because I made alcohol available to his kid.

Need a gut check on this.

 
While I don’t have a lot of alcohol in the house I almost always have some beer in the garage fridge and a bourbon and/or scotch in the top of the pantry.  4 kids, 3 teenagers, never considered locking it up.

 
Nope. Never locked up the beer or liquor when my kids were in high school. They were always too busy to get into trouble.

Now that my oldest has graduated college and moved back home,  I might have to lock up the good bourbon and leave him the Beam though.

 
While I don’t have a lot of alcohol in the house I almost always have some beer in the garage fridge and a bourbon and/or scotch in the top of the pantry.  4 kids, 3 teenagers, never considered locking it up.
Almost exactly this for me. Not that much in the house anyway, and I’d notice if stuff started disappearing.

 
It's never been an issue here, but if we started having a lot of teens hanging out here I'd either lock it up or put it somewhere the other kids wouldn't see it. 

 
my oldest is a sophomore in HS and him and his friends frequently hang out in my basement, where I have a fully stocked bar.  I've never locked anything up until last weekend when he had about 20 people over after the homecoming game.  I moved out all of the opened liquor and beer from the fridge just in case.  I don't think they would've touched it but I know what I was doing by my sophomore year so I'll play it safe from here on out

 
I just put a lock on the door to my wine cellar and we are going to move all our booze down there, and put a small fridge down there for our beer.   For us, its mostly about the kids we don't know very well.  If we're hosting, I never want another parent to be pissed at me because I made alcohol available to his kid.

Need a gut check on this.
Here’s my response:  You have a wine cellar! That is pretty darn cool (no pun intended).

 
Here’s my response:  You have a wine cellar! That is pretty darn cool (no pun intended).
More accurate is to say I have a dark cold room in my basement where I keep my wine. In my old age, I tend to buy more than I drink, which is becoming somewhat of a problem. 
 

 
Depends more on the kid than the age, IMO. Never even considered locking anything up with my older daughter and her friends (she's a college freshman now and still has no interest in drinking). Wouldn't consider leaving my younger daughter and her friends in my basement (she's a HS junior and regularly goes to parties where there is alcohol present).

 
Jokes on them, I have no alcohol, otherwise I would look forward to yelling at them for ruining the bottle by filling the difference with water, rather than them drinking it. Growing up a friends dad had a keg-erater in the garage that kids in the neighborhood were given essentially free access too (think about high school aged), with kind of a wink wink nudge nudge "Oh no, don't drink that beer". It never got out of hand, kids would just hangout and play pool or ping pong while drinking whatever pilsner was in the keg, I don't recall anyone getting sloppy drunk. Same with some high school graduation parties, where beer was provided to 17/18 year olds. I feel like restricting something makes it more binge worthy, whether it is soda, sugary cereal, or alcohol. Then again, my kids are pretty far from being old enough for that to be a concern, so I dunno. Also, having kids drinking in your garage would probably not fly now.

 
We don't, but have considered putting Ring alarm sensors on our cabinet.

Mostly we have relied on the fact that our teenagers know that if anyone is found to have taken any alcohol that their friends are no longer welcome at our house... forever. That seems to put the fear in them.

 
Jokes on them, I have no alcohol, otherwise I would look forward to yelling at them for ruining the bottle by filling the difference with water, rather than them drinking it. Growing up a friends dad had a keg-erater in the garage that kids in the neighborhood were given essentially free access too (think about high school aged), with kind of a wink wink nudge nudge "Oh no, don't drink that beer". It never got out of hand, kids would just hangout and play pool or ping pong while drinking whatever pilsner was in the keg, I don't recall anyone getting sloppy drunk. Same with some high school graduation parties, where beer was provided to 17/18 year olds. I feel like restricting something makes it more binge worthy, whether it is soda, sugary cereal, or alcohol. Then again, my kids are pretty far from being old enough for that to be a concern, so I dunno. Also, having kids drinking in your garage would probably not fly now.
Many of our friends have strategies to introduce their kids to alcohol before sending them away to college.  I think that's important.  It was less of an issue for my generation as we had a drinking age of 18 at the time.  That said, no matter what your thoughts or beliefs are, it is obviously 100% taboo to apply them to other people's kids. 

 
Many of our friends have strategies to introduce their kids to alcohol before sending them away to college.  I think that's important.  It was less of an issue for my generation as we had a drinking age of 18 at the time.  That said, no matter what your thoughts or beliefs are, it is obviously 100% taboo to apply them to other people's kids. 
The parents were often in the house drinking while the kids were in the garage, it was a large group of 20+ or so people that knew each other, not like random kids would stop by off the street and grab a beer, if that was unclear.

 
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The parents were often in the house drinking while the kids were in the garage, it was a large group of 20+ or so people that knew each other, not like random kids would stop by off the street and grab a beer, if that was unclear.
Yeah, I completely understand that.  It was the same for us in the 80s.  Obviously not possible today to put out a keg for a group of 17/18 year olds.

I think most of us probably don't want to send our kids off to college without being at least familiar with the different types of alcohol and what it can do to you.  

 
Kids are younger than this so far, but I would feel differently about beer than liquor. If a kid swipes a can of beer from my fridge to seem cool, he’s probably not getting sick or crashing a car and I will probably know he took it. 

If a kid started drinking liquor at my house, the consequences seem higher and maybe easier to get away with. 

 
Relevant story.

My dad kept the booze in his liquor cabinet under lock and key, carried it on his keychain with his house, car, and office keys. That ring was with him 24/7.

Impetus was more driven by my older bro, who was a bit of a troublemaker, but I won't lie to say that I was completely innocent of swiping the odd thing here and there for a flask to take to the park with my friends.

Anyway, I got my license the same day as I turned 16. The first weekend of being able to solo drive, I asked to borrow my dad's car to run an errand. Part of that errand was going to the hardware tore to have that liquor cabinet key copied. He was none the wiser.

My kids don't seem like the type to sneak liquor but did catch my 15 year old trying to pawn some of the adult's vodka at a party this summer -- was his very first taste of booze, not sure he really liked it and admitted he did it. But that clued me into the fact that it could happen. So I am debating locking it up, and coming up with a different strategy for key security, obviously.

 
No I don't lock it up but we don't have any White Claw or flavored vodkas in the house.  I swear that's all youngsters (yeah get off my lawn) drink nowadays. 

 
I don't lock up any alcohol and I talk to my kids about drinking and even ask them if they want to try what I am drinking.  I have also told them I don't care if they want to try as long as I know about it.  My daughter is now in college and she would try things but didn't really like it through HS and isn't a drinking in college either.  She just doesn't like it.

My son (13) won't even try a sip anymore because he disliked it so much.  I found that if you don't make it a big deal but be clear about only trying if I am aware of it that it loses it's mysteriousness and really isn't a big deal.  Maybe it's just my kids and they don't like it but I have never even thought about locking things up. 

 
When I was younger I was too paranoid to use my parents own stuff in case they noticed or somehow kept tabs on the levels lol.

If I was gonna drink at my place underage/throw a party or something, we'd just get an older friend/sibling to buy our own stuff.

 
i only did it one time when my son was having a group of friends over.

I mean I was pretty sure it would be fine - i never would have drank when my parents were at the house but just wanted to be safe.

My downstairs fridge actually has a lock on it so it was easy

 
I'd leave it unlocked, and let them know I'm trusting them with it being unlocked, until they gave me a reason not to. 

Disclaimer:  I don't have teenagers yet.

 
Maybe FFA progeny are different, but almost nobody likes booze the first time(s), and kids tend to hide bad behavior from their parents
This is why you talk to them about it and don't make it a bad behavior by itself.  If you de-stigmatize it and make it something to be discussed then the added fun of sneaking around is taken away.  

Talk about it and let them know they shouldn't be doing it to get drunk and stupid (at least not yet..haha).   Let them try it in your presence and talk about it.  It cuts down on the deception

 
I don't lock up any alcohol and I talk to my kids about drinking and even ask them if they want to try what I am drinking.  I have also told them I don't care if they want to try as long as I know about it.  My daughter is now in college and she would try things but didn't really like it through HS and isn't a drinking in college either.  She just doesn't like it.

My son (13) won't even try a sip anymore because he disliked it so much.  I found that if you don't make it a big deal but be clear about only trying if I am aware of it that it loses it's mysteriousness and really isn't a big deal.  Maybe it's just my kids and they don't like it but I have never even thought about locking things up. 
My kids are 8 and 6 and they know I like drinking beer.  My 8-year old daughter has tried sips of beer and she hates it.  Start 'em young!  The 6-year old boy doesn't even want to try, but then again he's picky asf.  I told him that one day he will enjoy them and I can't want to be able to go beer tasting with him.  :lol:    He just laughs.

 

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