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A new trend is causing tongues to wag as it increases in popularity. Coffee drinking parents are now seemingly spreading their addiction to the next generation, giving their adorable toddlers their very own Babyccinos. This of course is giving conniption fits in certain parenting circles. How dare hipster parents share their love of the drink with their young offspring.
For those who have not seen the articles or heard of the trend, the story goes like this: caffeine craving parents are now ordering drinks for their preschoolers. Generally these drinks consist of streamed milk and foam, and it often includes chocolate or decaffeinated espresso shots.
This so called trend is the fact that it has been around for ages. Twelve years ago, the town my boarding school was in had a Chinese restaurant and a single coffee shop for our hang out choices. As a non-coffee drinker I would choose a steamer with a hazelnut shot. They were pretty tasty, so no wonder the toddler set likes them. Even back then, there were blurry eyed parents handing these steamers to little kids. They didn’t have the cutesie name back then, but they were the same idea.
I really don’t have a problem with these so-called Babycinnos. Aside from being tasty, for a lot of parents resorting to giving their children these drinks the trip to the coffee shop is one of the few things keeping them sane. They may be parents, but they are still adults and they need adult interaction, and more than likely, a good shot of caffeine. If a little bribe in the coffee shop helps contribute to this daily sanity booster, who are we to judge?
Society today loves to pick on parental choice these days. They have taken the concept of it takes a village to raise a child, but ignore the part where the village actually helps raise the child. Instead, they like to tisk-tisk parents who don’t always feed their snowflakes free-range chicken, fail to dress them in organic bamboo clothes, or heaven forbid, parents who give a little bribe in the coffee shop for a couple moments of real world interaction. Sometimes parents can make decisions that may not be what the prevailing wisdom may call for, but as long as the parents are doing things that can harm the child (like making it say an Irish coffee) it is okay to be a little different from the crowd.
