Children in the pub?

mariaalice

I am the original poster of this thread ...I think people are missing one or two points.

To the people who say that they enjoyed playing in the pub when they were children...a pub is not a place to play nor is a pub car park.( that exactly what I saw on children playing in a pub carpark which is beside a road they were completely unsupervised and were ruining in and out of the pub )

I think its a small bit ott to say children should never see adults having alcohol.

But its more about re framing your thinking about St Patrick's day and other occasions like that.....every where in Ireland is near a mountain or a woodland walk or a beach walk..there are hundreds of suitable outings for families..The OPW has a great book about the sites they run or look up coilta....

Pubs in rural Ireland are different thats true and they are more tolerant of children but its still wrong IMO to spent the after noon in a pub drinking ( even if it is st Patricks day ) while your children are there.

maameeo

i see no problem with children in a pub during the day as long as their parents are looking after them and keeping them under control. As well as keeping themselves under control, not nice to see a drunk parent with a child!
ive gone to the pub with my parents and my daughter (8) during the day. id have a coffee and wouldnt stay long because i dont enjoy having to tell my daughter to sit down constantly.

Love when we go to spain and the pubs are so child friendly, with playrooms etc but again i wouldnt really drink much or any when looking after my daughter.

its a tough one, and i think it definitely depends on how you do it not if you do it.

upinthesky

no absolutely not how can you sit and have a drink and relax when you have children?
don't care the children are not been looked after 100% when the parents are drinking
an how are these people getting home when they have kids??

seamus

I'm torn on this one. There's the argument that if you bring the kids into the pub, then they see that, "this is the adult's playground" and want to get involved.

But on the other hand, if you specifically don't allow them to go, then they hear that Daddy is going to the pub but you're not allowed go, and that makes them want to know even more what goes on in the pub that makes Daddy (or Mammy!) enjoy it so much.

As Wolfe Tone says, some of my best memories as a child are of being in a pub at a family event with my coke and crisps and listening to the funny adults or playing with my cousins. Drunkenness always went over my head - I can never recall noticing anyone being drunk until I started drinking myself.

I would always be wary of making alcohol a magical, mystical substance that children never see being consumed. Again, IMO it only adds to its mystery and taboo and makes them want to know more about it. On the contrary, I would be of the opinion that a small glass of wine with dinner for a 12 year old (if the parents are having one too!) is a responsible way of introducing kids to alcohol. Same for allowing a 14 year old to have a bottle of beer while watching a football match with his old man.
Most kids will have started drinking by the time they're 16 so you need to get in there first and remove the mystique and coolness from it.

Obviously there's a huge difference between going out for a night of drinking and chatting with mates, versus a Sunday carvery with a pint or a glass of wine. I don't think that there's any big deal with the latter (just keep your fecking kids under control!)

stovelid

Moderation is the key to everything as ever.

For me, stopping yourself from having a drink or two because children turn up is almost as silly as falling around in front of them.

I don't think having the kids in the pub all the time is right but no problem with it occasionally. Like a lot of kids, I remember being in the pub on family occasions or before football matches with my dad and liked the crowd and the occasion. You didn't notice drunkenness unless it was completely OTT and for most people, it's not OTT.

up for anything

Coming from a non-regular Irish family, my parents, their friends and various visiting relations would drink at home. My dad used to make his own home brew back in the 60s. I remember in the mid 70s heading to the pub down the road to get a jug of beer for him on a Saturday evening. My mother would be more the spirits and wine type and if drinking beer had to get value for money so was a Carlsberg Special woman, although some of the funnier moments in my life would have been when some pubs didn't sell Special Brew and listening to my mother grilling the bar person on which had the highest volume of alcohol, Ritz, Lancer or whatever they happened to sell. A lesson in value for money.

We used to get taken to the pub some Sundays while the dinner was cooking (in the days when they closed between 2-4pm) while they had a drink and we either had Cokes or the alcohol of our choice. Mine was usually a Babycham or Snowball while my brother preferred liquers. As I got older and my parents became involved in pubs and hotels, my dad would take me on trips to spy on the opposition. I moved on to becoming a whisky expert or another particular favourite was Martini and white lemonade. I remember one particular expedition to a hotel in Clonmel when I was 17. There were a group of lads over in one corner of the bar and every second word was a profanity coupled with blasphemy. My dad got up, went over to them and politely asked them to refrain from swearing as he had a young lady with him. They did. Nowadays he'd probably be decked or laughed out of it.

My point is that none of us ever came to any harm in pubs, we weren't tarnished or tainted by spending time in them. None of us have ended up alcoholics and in fact probably learned to drink more responsibly than those of our friends who lived in houses with locked drink cabinets and no pub outings. Those were different days though before the advent of real binge drinking.

[/end of boring stories about the old days]