You Gringos have a weird bee in your bonnet about letting children drink coffee. Yet you pump the poor little bastards full of Ritalin without a moment's thought.

We just like them to move slower than we do.

Though Ritalin and its family of drugs are likely overprescribed, they do serve an actual medicinal purpose, do require a physician's evaluation, and do work when properly adminstered to appropriate children. I think more than a moment's thought goes into it, at least for most parents. For children, I'm not sure what purpose caffeine serves from a pharmalogical perspective.

But I raise a question over kids and coffee for a different reason. Kids are already energetic. Do we need to pour stimulants down their throats? I prefer using Benedryl instead, which maximizes my uninterrupted World of Warcraft time.

Coffee or Ritalin, that is the question. Having been a hyperactive child I was actually given both. First the Ritalin, but it turned out that most drug's effects were reversed by my system. Then coffee in the hopes that caffine would be reversed as well. It wasn't, so I just continued to bang off the walls and run my mouth from the 3rd to 8th grades.

Ritalin is a stimulant, but it has a calming effect on hyperactive kids. I saw some doctor on TV once discuss this contrary-to-expectations effect, and they noted that in some countries a folk cure for hyperactive kids was to give them coffee beans to suck on, which seemed to work on the same principle. So this may not be as crazy as it initially seems.

Beyond that, sorry, but I don't consider coffee a big deal, even for kids. When you compare it to most recreational drugs, smoking, alcohol, and even a bad diet, it doesn't really come out looking that bad. Yes, caffeine is addictive, but it has a very mild effect on most people. Taking my examples, you could point to people that screwed up their life with drugs, people in bad shape from smoking (hacking their lungs out, gasping for breath), drunks, and moridly obese people that lead very limited lives. Everyone knows people like that. But who can really point to someone that's destroyed their life with coffee or caffeine?

Actually, I like this idea. Not all kids want or like coffee in the first place, and some try it to emulate adults. I remember liking the smell of coffee and wanting to drink it when I was a kid, but that's just me. Besides, nobody has to tell them its decaf, and I'd rather see kids taking to coffee at an eary age than tooth-rotting, empty calorie soft drinks.

Coffee and other stimulants often have the opposite effect on children than they do on adults.

My mom is Italian, raised in Argentina. She made us this breakfast treat once in a while when we were little; torn bread pieces in a bowl, covered with hot coffee and milk, sprinkled with sugar.

It was a comfort food for me when I was a kid.
Don't knock it til you've tried it.

Brazilian coffee! Feh!

Coffee for breakfast. $2.50.

Pack of smokes at recess. $4.50.

Liquid lunch followed by Siesta? $8.75.

Fourth grade in Rio? Priceless.

Under the plan, a coffee roaster would adopt a school of at least 500 children and provide them with a free breakfast of coffee, milk and bread.

In exchange for the meals, the coffee roasters would receive the manual labor services of at least 500 children during peak coffee bean picking season.

"We fully expect the children to cooperate and even be enthusiastic" said Miguel Escancion, president of Brazil's coffee growers association.

.

I had a friend in high school who was like "Oh I can't function in the morning without coffee." Even then I thought, Jesus Christ, you're 16. What are you going to be like when you're 40?

She'd be about 37 now, same as me. She's probably progressed to intravenous epinephrine injections and a defibrillator.

Coffee is very good for you.

No, I'm not shitting you.
It has more cancer-fighting antioxidants than green tea.
If you have asthma, you may have already noticed that a hot cup of joe relieves you of that wheeziness.

My husband has wicked hayfever-type allergies and his best medicine is a hot coffee.

Drinking 2-4 cups of coffee per day lowers your risk of colon cancer, gallstones, cirrhosis of the liver, and Parkinson's disease.

Plant alkaloids; is there anything they can't do?

Yeah... and spanking your monkey regularly decreases the chances of prostate cancer... hehehe!

And who wants to do that... the monkey spanking, I mean.

Way down among Brazilians
Coffee beans grow by the billions
So they’ve got to find those extra cups to fill
They’ve got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil

You can’t get cherry soda
’cause they’ve got to fill that quota
And the way things are I’ll bet they never will
They’ve got a zillion tons of coffee in Brazil

Laura,

So it's iced espresso in the baby's bottle at chez w?

"She's probably progressed to intravenous epinephrine injections and a defibrillator."

Uh, yeah, that sounds terrible. (Discreetly shoves drip bag and needle under the desk with foot.)

I've never been big on breakfast myself, but this doesn't exactly sound like the breakfast of champions!

Can't be any worse than a bowl of sugar-frosted choco-bombs...

vrwc, we like a cuppa joe at the w homestead.

Have worked and traveled in Brazil many times.. they love their coffee there, and youngsters get to enjoy it too. Very strong brew with lots of sugar in it, but usually only a demi-tasse portion.

Which is kinda like 3 cups of Folger's.

Must... fight... urge to... link to Xuxa site... again. Damn.