Originally Posted by ScottFromWI

You might be surprised how much your kids really know Vinny, I know I was. I also thought I hid my drinking well, but in the end that was another lie my alcoholism was telling me. All the times I fell asleep on the couch or the way I smelled, or the way I talked - even younger kids notice something is different about their parents when they are drunk, which I was pretty much every waking moment I wasn't at work.

Kids do learn a lot about drugs and alcohol in school too, but frankly it's hard enough for us to understand our own addiction - much less explain it to someone else. What I tell my kids is that I don't drink because I choose not to, and that drinking is not good for me, which is quite true in my case. My wife still has an occasional single glass of wine, maybe once a month or less - so I don't demonize alcohol around them. But they know something is different about my relationship with alcohol - and why I don't drink at all. For refernce, my kids are between the ages of 10 and 16 currently - they were 4-9 when I quit.