Thinking about giving your child alcohol in moderation to take away the "allure" of underage drinking in the teenage years? According to the latest Brown University study published in the  Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, you may want to think again.

A study on early use of alcohol found that early sipping of alcohol by young students is associated with risky alcohol behaviors when they enter high school. In addition, offering young people just a sip of alcohol may undermine prevention messages about alcohol for youth.

The web-based study looked at alcohol use by 561 students at the beginning of sixth grade and again at ninth grade. Approximately one out of three study participants had sipped alcohol by the fall of sixth grade. Most participants who sipped alcohol before sixth grade had their first sip in their own home, most often from a parent. Young people who sipped alcohol by sixth grade were much more likely to consume a full drink, get drunk, and drink heavily by ninth grade than nonsippers.

 “The Prospective Association Between Sipping Alcohol by the Sixth Grade and Later Substance Use” was published in the March 2015 issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. The National Institutes of Health supported this research.

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