My nine-year-old daughter, Freckles, is a big reader. It’s great, although I think I’m single-handedly keeping Amazon in business. She’s at that “tween” stage where they read a lot of book series. All of Nancy Drew, Lizzie McGuire, Camp Confidential. Now she’s reading a series called the Beacon Street Girls. (www.beaconstreetgirls.com)

The Beacon Street Girls are a multi-ethnic group of friends in junior high. I read the back cover of a few of the books, they seemed appropriate. I bought them. Freckles read them. She wanted more. I bought the rest of the series to date online.

One night before bed, Freckles comes out of her room very upset. She’s crying, she’s panicky, she wants to do “that breathing thing.” In through the nose, hold, out through the mouth. You know.

Anyway, it turns out one of the characters or some of the characters in one of books gets drunk and throws up. Not one of the Beacon Street Girls, another character. Freckles is upset because she thinks she’s going to drink one day and throw up. (Between you and me, I can just about guarantee it.)

I actually think very highly of this book series. It obviously engages her interest and the books seem to deal with issues that face real girls her age. Plus, it gave us the opportunity to talk about the issue before it became an actual issue for us.

So, four tissues and lots of breathing later, Freckles is calm enough for us to have that talk.

She’s only nine, but it’s a crazy world, so I ask Freckles if any of her friends are drinking. No. I’m relieved to hear this, but to be honest, I didn’t think they were. Who has time to drink when there are so many pictures of High School Musical to download off the internet? Who do you like better, Vanessa or Ashley? What’s with Zac Effron’s hair? Weird!

You should probably know that Freckles is an acute over-analyzer. What if, what if, what if? To the point that she likes to do contingency planning for things that never happen. It’s a lot of pressure for a little kid. I am trying to get her to take a more deal-with-it-when-it-happens approach, but in this case, I’m glad we could talk about drinking in the hypothetical.

After I determined that alcohol had not become an issue in her actual life yet, I told Freckles that if any of her friends started drinking or if she knew of anyone in school who was, she should let me know. That way, I could talk to their parents and they could get the help they need.

Bottom-lining it, here’s where we came out: I told her that getting drunk is never good, that it can make you throw up, that you should never drive drunk, and that you won’t feel good the next day. On the other hand, alcohol is legal if you’re an adult (I told my kids that you become a grown-up at 24 and so far they’re still buying it), is okay in moderation, and can even be good for you. Papa’s doctor told him to have one drink per day for his heart, in fact.

Unlike with illegal drugs that are never acceptable, I find the issue of prescription drugs and alcohol trickier because, sometimes they’re okay and sometimes they’re not. This poses a challenge for me as the mom of an acute over-analyzer. She likes to make rules for herself. She’s very rigid. Sometimes, things aren’t cut and dried. But don’t tell Freckles.

She’s decided she’s never even going to have one drink. No way. That’s just so stupid. What kind of idiot would want to do that? I mean, unless your doctor told you to like Papa’s, but, whatever.

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  Posted by: Sarit Catz