“Drinking starts - like all sorts of other things - in Year 9,” said her 17-year-old son. Cassandra Jardine investigates teen drinking and offers parents sound advice

Here we go, I thought on the summer evening my 13-year-old daughter chose to pop the question. She had a friend staying and I was cooking when, amidst nervous giggles, she asked: “Can Hannah and I have a drink with dinner?” This alcoholic rite of passage wasn't one I had been looking forward to. My eldest daughter, now 15, had spared me the problem when, some years back, she decided that she didn't like the taste of alcohol, nor the way her friends set out to get blind drunk. But some children are party animals and my second daughter is one such. Once she tasted alcohol, I have always felt sure that she would take to it with alarming verve.

This first request was bang on cue. Twelve to thirteen is the age at which children start experimenting with alcohol, according to research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. My son confirms this: “Drinking starts like all sorts of other things in Year 9.” It was certainly true for him. He was 13 when he had to be carted out of a family wedding, vomiting all over the hotel carpet, to continue heaving down the sides of the car as we drove home in stony silence.

Over the past decade, 15-16 year olds in the UK have established an alarming reputation for being among the keenest under-age binge drinkers, their excesses exceeded only by the Irish and Dutch. The proportion of 11-15 year olds who drink has remained at about 60 per cent since l988 but among those drinkers, consumption has doubled from 5.3 units a week in 1990 to 10.5 in 2005.

Perhaps most troubling is the evidence that girls are now drinking as much as
boys, even though they are less well-equipped to handle it. Unit for unit,
girls get drunker. And drunken girls are a worry. Like boys, they are likely to
be involved in accidents when drunk; they are vulnerable to rape and unsafe sex at time when they can scarcely see straight.

The recent spate of violent incidents involving drink-fuelled teenagers is prompting government action. Next year guidelines will be issued for teenagers on how to drink safely. Meantime, many lobbying groups are arguing to make alcohol more expensive and to limit its sale to over-21s.

Will such measures help? I'm not sure. A £2.99 bottle of wine is well within the
range of teenagers' pocket money. As for the ease with which they buy it, I've
yet to see a retailer demand proof of age.

Maybe parents shouldn't worry. Teenagers have always experimented with drink. At that age, I spent the latter part of every party locked in bathrooms trying to sober up. Early encounters with the opposite sex are nerve-wracking and a Bacardi Breezer is probably a safer way of relaxing than a joint. However true that is, the hockey-stick graphs which show a rapid increase in the number of 20-and 30-somethings with cirrhosis and other drink-related illnesses are enough to push every parental panic button.

So what should we do? Prohibition is the simplest answer, but it may not be the best solution. Apart from being impossible to enforce, there's ample evidence that the teenagers who haven't drunk before arriving at university are the ones who end up in A&E before the first week is out.

A better plan seems to be to teach teenagers to drink in moderation. But how?
Drinkaware set-up by the Portman group who represent drink manufacturers,
offers advice on matters such as how to deal with cases of alcohol poisoning.
Answer: call an ambulance, lie the idiot teenager on his/her side to keep the
airways open and keep him/her warm (see www.drinkaware.co.uk). Family meals are the place, the charity says, for putting across the subliminal message that alcohol is best consumed with food and you hope sparkling conversation. It's also the moment to slip in sadly all-too-real stories about unwary girls who
had Rohypnol, the date-rape drug, slipped into their drinks, though tales of
those who nearly died from choking on their own vomit aren't, perhaps, ideal
for the dinner table. Putting theory into practise,when my 13-year-old asked
for wine, I smiled sweetly, poured out half-glasses for her and her friend,
told them that wine is fattening, listened to them titter and then watched them
fall fast asleep in front of the television after dinner.