Police Overreact to Parents Posting Photo of Their 4-Year-Old With Beer Bottle

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
by Sasha Brown-Worsham 1 hour ago

Parents are being investigated after they posted a photo of their 4-year-old daughter "drinking" out of a beer bottle. The caption underneath the Instagram photo was "German beer is goooudd! Haha already likes expensive bottles!" Instead of laughs, they got reported.

As a parent myself, I get the basic concept. Beer is bad for kids. Any alcohol is bad for children. Obviously. But isn't this sort of an iconic photo we all have from our childhood? Remember how HILARIOUS it is to pretend like our kid is drinking? I know I have that photo in my family album and my parents were practically teetotalers.

I also know I have seen it in many other kids' albums. It's not a big deal. As I recall, the smell of beer even made me sick until I was well over the legal age. So why are these parents getting so much flak?

We might need to take a few steps back in cases like these. Is it funny? Not to everyone. I actually don't have this photo of my own children. But honestly, that's less because I am offended and more just because I think it's overplayed. I know I have seen it on Facebook and no one bats an eye. We KNOW our friends are good parents and wouldn't give their toddler beer. But I guess people don't know the same about these parents who posted the photo on the Instagram account of Davinci Tattoo and Piercing.

The parents, for their part, have said it was water in the bottle and I tend to believe them. Even if I WANTED to get my 5- or 6-year-old to try beer or wine, I know they wouldn't. They have sniffed at our glasses and looked at us like we were insane.

"How can you drink that?" my daughter asked. It's an acquired taste. So the likelihood of a 4-year-old loving beer to the point where she would turn the bottle upside down in her mouth seems pretty low.

It's a lot more likely that this was a joke and people took it too seriously. I think we all need to take a few steps back and reevaluate ourselves when we feel the need to freak out over things we might not even understand.

Do you have that photo in your baby album?

Image via BitchBuzz/Flickr

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sasha Brown-Worsham

can't decide whether she is a mother, writer, or runner, but is usually all three at some point each day. She has written for dozens of print magazines, newspapers, and websites. She rarely ever writes on bathroom walls.

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