Woman claims her child was expelled after she sent her to school with non-alcoholic cider

While it was a decision that received heavy backlash, the government’s decision to ban alcohol at various points in its risk-adjusted strategy to curb the spread of the coronavirus helped to introduce South Africans to a wide range of non-alcoholic beverages.

That being said, while parents try and give their children a well-balanced school lunch, there do come days where they forget to replenish their grocery cupboards. For one South African mom, when she discovered that she ran out of fruit juice, she improvised and sent her child to school with a non-alcoholic Savanna instead – and her daughter found herself in a whole lot of trouble.

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Sharing her story on Twitter, @MissGU_ posted a picture of her child’s lunch box, saying: “My child was expelled from school on Friday. But what did I do wrong mina because I didn't have juice so I gave her a non alcoholic savannah.”

The woman explains that she and her daughter were running late for school when they discovered that the fruit juice in the house had come to an end. The woman decided to send her daughter to school with the Savanna non-alcoholic cider because there was a cold one in the fridge and she thought, “why not?”.

“So you have beer in your fridge but not your child's juice. You must have adopted that child,” a fellow Twitter user challenged the mom. However, she defended herself by saying: “It's a cider not beer. She drinks juice everyday and I don't drink alcohol everyday so a juice is bound to finish quicker than my savannah. Shush please."

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While it is unknown if the story really happened or if the woman simply made the story up to create conversation on the app, educational psychologist Mandy Arnott spoke to IOL on the dangers of allowing children to drink non-alcoholic ciders.

"The controversy around whether youngsters should be consuming non-alcoholic drinks is only the tip of the iceberg of a much bigger problem and one that needs to be addressed with great urgency in our country,” Mandy explains.

She adds that drinking non-alcoholic ciders simply serve as a substitute and precursor for the consumption of alcohol at a later stage in their lives. “During lockdown, many adults have taken to drinking non-alcoholic beverages, not as a life choice but as a substitute for the 'real thing'. Children watch this and internalise this sentiment,” Mandy continues. “So, although they may be drinking non-alcoholic beverages, it is only until they can 'have the real thing’, so that message has become deeply ingrained in their subconscious minds.”

Meanwhile, Savanna released a statement on social media last year saying that while their non-alcoholic beverages don’t contain any alcohol, they are still not to be consumed by children.

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Image courtesy: Twitter