What's the Harm if my Kid has a Glass of Wine at Thanksgiving?

In Texas, it's legal for parents to give alcohol to their children if they are under their supervision. But just because it's legal doesn't mean you should!
We've noticed that parents get really defensive if they believe you are trying to tell them how to raise their kids.

But we have a reason for saying you should think twice before letting your kids try alcohol, even under your watch. Namely, it affects their brain development! This is from a colleague who has a great blog, http://etexsac.blogspot.com.

Brains under construction: Neuroscientists have determined that the adolescent brain is going through a specific "pruning" process, wherein the myriad of underused connections that were established in childhood are being severed. This process makes adult brains function much more efficiently than those of adolescents and children. The thing is, this process is development--it is akin to mixing up cake batter for a recipe, albeit a recipe that takes about 12 years to complete. Adding substances to the mixture can have pretty serious consequences. Messing with the brain chemistry of youths by overstimulating their dopamine receptors, etc., can have unpredictable, negative outcomes.

Additional vulnerability: Brains mature from the back/bottom (the brain stem area from where fundamental processes arise) to the top/front (where judgement lives). This bit of trivia means that young people are often  more likely to experiment and disregard consequences than they would be after the full development of the frontal cortex.

Correlation between early exposure and later alcohol problems: The average age of first use of alcohol in Texas is 13.5 years old. Statistically, the later a person begins using alcohol, the less likely he or she is to develop an alcohol abuse problem later in life. In the chart below, you can see that youth who begin drinking prior to age 15 have a 40% likelihood of having serious alcohol issues in adulthood. But the later we can delay their exposure to alcohol, the better their odds become, with young people beginning to drink around age 21 having only a 10% chance of serious alcohol issues.