The Shirley Temple was named after... Guess Who! It was originally ginger ale, but is now usually lemon lime soda, with grenadine, lime, and cherries. Why? For children to drink when they were with their parents in a bar. Shirley Temple tasted the drink, and found it too sweet.

Is it not common anymore that children copy adult behaviour in their playtime? Like playing family or pretending to smoke a chocolate stick or having a fancy tea party? Wearing adults' clothes and nail polish just for fun? So drinking from fancy (plastic) glasses is just a game here as long as there is no alcohol present.

I get that the expensive skincare and other things mentioned aren't okay for a 9yo. There's actually been some concern among pediatricians and child psychologists about the effects of preteen girls using things like anti-aging creams. But non-alcoholic mocktails at a birthday sleepover has been a thing for forever. I remember going to one in the 90s where we got to have piña coladas and strawberry daiquiris and even my very fundamentalist Christian parents who viewed alcohol consumption as a sin didn't care.

Ffs! For New Years and birthdays, we bought sparkling grape juice (kid wine as my daughter called it) so the kids could toast with us. OP sounds more envious than upset.

I’m 63 now, but when I was a child, starting about when I was six-ish, I had my very first Shirley Temple at a really nice restaurant my parents and I went to. They had their cocktails and I had mine. The same bartender mixed all the drinks. At family weddings, I would get one small sip of champagne for the toast. I didn’t like it back then, and even now there are only a couple brands that taste good to me—-and they’re too expensive to drink all that often—-so there was no chance I’d want more. It’s a birthday party. I went to plenty of them, a lot of which were a combination birthday party/sleepover (not coed, because back then girls still thought boys were gross at that age), and by the time I was 10, I had been to several where we had a blast experimenting with makeup and hairstyles (no cutting, just styling). The host Mom always supervised, and gave us lessons in how to put on makeup and do hair. It was fun. Then we washed our faces and brushed our hair out, got in our pajamas, and set out our sleeping bags on the floor. Let the kids play pretend that they’re adults toasting the birthday girl with champagne, ffs. It’s not like they’re going to then proceed to raid the parents’ liquor cabinet and chug down all the bottles of booze in it.

Her 9 year old is suffering more damage from over-anxious and over-controlling parenting than from "adultification".

I know I certainly pretended, as a child around that age, to pretend to smoke when I had a Chupa-Chup to mimick family or family friends around me. And I can assure everyone that I have never smoked, not do I have the intention to. Little chutes would just make the kids feel glamorous or adult in a harmless way, or ‘special’ for being allowed to use sonething typically meant for adults.

What does 'served like alcohol' mean? In a fancy glass? With candies? Those are ALL things that can apply to non-alcoholic/children drinks. I thought at the very least the mom may have called them cocktails or encouraged them to act drunk or something but....really? This is nothing. It was a fun drink, served in a fun glass. And FYI - I'm a serious cocktail fan. I regularly go to a place that has been nationally recognized. They serve mocktails. I've never had one with candy in it. Also - none of them come in plastic cups. Take a deep breath - this was no in no way inappropriate and absolutely matched what you already knew about the woman.

If anything, none of the kids thought about it until Ms. Kravitz brought it up.

I remember getting Shirley Temples and Virgin Pina Colada as a kid and though I developed a pill habit later on as an adult, I don't drink. I haven't had a drink in 15 years. Honestly, keeping the mystery about alcohol grows more interest IMO. Addiction is a weird beast and can manifest in more ways than just alcohol and d***s.

So I suppose this woman also never did anything like buy her daughter a toy kitchen set, or bought her a doll, or let her clatter around in high heels. What difference could it possibly make how the fizzy drink was served?

The next time op hosts a sleepover party, she can serve ice cream sundae, milkshake or hot cocoa, okay?

I get what she's saying, I think. It's a bit uptight to be uncomfortable with kids being served a kids beverage, but I get the optics made her upset. As a mom of a young tween I also see social media trends making very young children want to use skincare & dress older & genery percieve they are older in their minds; thats natural on some kids end, but social media trends have really upped the game because it's a whole new market for these beauty companies. However, it's not really just the kids bday drinks she's worried about, it's this young girl's influence on her own daughter & sadly I understand that, it's hard to fight. Maybe just pick your battles, the harder you try to keep them away from each other as friends, the deeper the desire becomes in the kid to want to be like that other kid.

"She drinks more water than she ever has" because she has a frickin' Stanley cup. Hope you're cool with the lead and tendency to accumulate bacteria. BTW, there is no scientific evidence that people don't drink enough water. That's a trend that was invented and is pushed by the bottled water industry. We are not all walking around on the verge of passing out from dehydration.

"leave home, drink alcohol, and drive later than their descendants" ...someone doesn't know the meaning of the word "descendant." If you're a teenager, you probably don't have descendants. Yes, I know there is a faction that says a word means the exact opposite of what it means.

You do know that "descendant" refers to the *younger* generation, right? You have a couple sentences up there that make no sense...

Kids are losing their childhoods earlier than ever and social media and cell phones are not happening. I agree with the Mom 1000%. People need to stop and think about how people used to get along without all this c**p. Gee, how on earth did kids survive before the internet? Horrors! They are tuning out completely to reality. The entitled generation is growing and it's not funny. Much of the younger parent generation grew up with the internet and know nothing else. They don't know the harm they are doing to society and their own kids. Stop and think about it. How long has Facebook been around? If the infrastructure were to go down, people would not know how to survive. Think about that one for a minute. If they can't get online they feel like their life is over. Kids don't even know what it means to be kids any more. Gee, I wonder why!

And to think that there are actual alcohol-free drinks marketing themselves as "champagne for kids".... Gotta love some good robby bubble.