By sarvenom - 11/01/2012 04:52 - Belgium

Today, my son’s kindergarten teacher asked her students to describe their dad with a word or an expression. In the midst of “kind” dads, “hug” dads and “kiss” dads, I'm the “whisky dad”. FML
I agree, your life sucks 516
You deserved it 257

Top comments

Comments

This isn't necessarily a big deal (unless OP knows he has an actual drinking problem.) Kids that young say all sorts of things, today this popped up in his mind, tomorrow it might be something else. Maybe dad's really into fine whisky and often talks about that, maybe he just got a bottle of whisky as a present and his son remembered that, or maybe the night before his son wanted to drink from his glass and he said it was whisky and whisky's only for dads, not for kids. So many possible explanations other than "OP is an alcoholic who doesn't spend time with hid kids".

Agreed. I am going to school for early childhood education right now and kids really do say the darnedest things ? every experience they have is a new one, so say dad had talked about the whiskey he got with another adult or had told his son he couldn't have any and educated him on what whiskey was, it is not the child's fault that he views this as something significant about his father, it is a new experience and he probably doesn't understand that it could be negative. He's a child. Children don't look at the world as defined as us adults do. Children are constantly evolving, learning, and gaining real world experience

I live in America so that was my thinking

moocowmilk0 19

Thats a sign you need to change a bit

You'd be surprised how much children notice about their parents behaviour

Well, knowing kids a one time reference can be enough. I showed my son a picture of his great-grandfather, who had been deceased for years at this point, ONCE when he was four. Two years later he still tells people about his great-grandfather and how he misses him.. he has never met the man and didn't recognise him anymore on the picture when I showed it to him again. Sometimes it's really hard to figure out their associations. If it's because you do in fact drink a lot of Whisky, OP, that's on you then really. Try doing it after their bed time, or just... not that frequently.

Drinking alcohol is not the same as having a bad influence on your kids really. This might be a cultural thing, maybe in your country drinking in front of kids isn't considered okay, but in Belgium we tend to be very casual about children and alcohol. Parents drink in the presence of their kids all the time and will sometimes allow children (but not as young as OP's kid) to have a little taste if they're curious. Not saying this is necessarily a good thing, I'm just pointing out that the fact that OP's son is aware of him drinking whisky is not at all seen as inappropriate here.

I was going to suggest maybe he meant facial hair, as kids often put "ee" sounds on words they can't pronounce (whiskers), but then I noticed you're in Belgium so the language difference blew a hole in my theory.

This isn't necessarily on OP. I had 2 hard lemonade with BBQ one night and my son told people, including his teacher, that "Dad drinks 2 bottles of vodka every night". Normally it's more like 2 a month. He observed something unusual that he didn't understand. Kids remember those things.

orangejubejube 20

Yup. In grade one we were asked to use one word to describe each parent; dad - big, mum - wine.

How frequently are you drinking in front of your child? This does not sound like a good home for children.

"Drinking in front of your child" and "being drunk in front of your child" are two different things. I certainly don't think it's healthy for a kid to grow up seeing their parents get completely wasted on a regular basis, but growing up seeing their parents enjoy a glass of some drink they like is really no big deal. I find it incredibly judgmental to state that this child isn't growing up in a good home based on the very limited information we get in this FML.

I'm sure that was a defining moment for you.