Hell, I don't want to know some of what I heard about friends' lives, let alone those of aquaintances.

Wrod. Explicit description of child abuse is, unsurprisingly, NSFW.

All of us kids had some phase when we were 12 or 13 of trying the wine, because we were so "grown up," but going back to the grape juice ASAP.

At my synagogue, all the pre-bar/bat mitzvah kids would go up to the front of the synagogue and drink those little tiny cups of grape juice after kiddush on Friday night. (There's a complicated reason why an adult is supposed to say that prayer and a kid is supposed to drink the wine/grape juice, but I can't remember it right now.) Saturday mornings, though, everyone is supposed to drink it, and so they just had the little cups of Maneschevitz. When I was a kid, they'd just let us each have the tiny cups of wine, but when I was 11, the synagogue got a new rabbi who went crazy with making sure that kids under 21 only had grape juice. Everyone (including all our parents) just rolled their eyes at him.

I don't think I've ever had communion where it wasn't grape juice. I've seen the tiny cups though.

All of us kids had some phase when we were 12 or 13 of trying the wine, because we were so "grown up," but going back to the grape juice ASAP.

On Passover night ("Seder"), you're supposed to have four cups of wine. Of course, grape juice is completely fine, and most of the grownups don't drink full four cups of wine (especially if they wanna stay awake until the end), but have at least some of them be grape juice instead. However, most kids will try to sneak as much "forbidden" wine as possible, and hope the parents wouldn't notice what their cups hold.

A couple of years ago I caught a thirteen years old cousin trying to do that. I promised to not tell his parents and let him continue with the wine, in one condition - that he doesn't neglect drinking lots of water while he's at it. The following morning he got up as if he didn't drink anything out of the usual the night before.

At my church (which is military chapel, a sort of nondenominational Protestant), they have wine and grape juice in the little shot glasses. They use white wine, so you can tell the difference.

The following morning he got up as if he didn't drink anything out of the usual the night before.

Impressive! Or scary, I'm not sure which.

an adult is supposed to say that prayer and a kid is supposed to drink the wine/grape juice

It's probably a custom, not a rule, because the way we do it, both on the evening and on the day one, everybody gets to drink. Only on the "havdala" (the blessing on the wine which separates the shabbat from the rest-of-the-week), just the person who pronounced the blessing drinks.

They use white wine, so you can tell the difference

Here we have a kind of grape juice that's light in color. Not exactly the color of white wine, but only a slightly darker, so you could still get confused.

Impressive! Or scary, I'm not sure which.

My thoughts exactly. Especially since I've known him since the day he was born.

There was one time at a seder that my sister insisted that she could have all four glasses of wine. My uncle said that she could do it if she could prove her mettle by downing a shot of Slivovitz first. (It's this REALLY disgusting plum vodka that's pretty much pure alcohol.) She was 18 or so at the time, and trying to prove that she was a grown-up college woman, not a kid like the rest of use. (The "rest of us" were both 15 at the time.) She got down half the shot in one gulp, then said it tasted so horrible that she couldn't drink the rest of it.

You know what would make my day a little better? If stuff would stop breaking. All at once.

It's probably a custom, not a rule, because the way we do it, both on the evening and on the day one, everybody gets to drink.

I remembered what it is. It's because, in the Ashkenazic custom, we say kiddush both at synagogue and at home, and so, at the synagogue one, a kid drinks it so it won't count as an adult saying it twice. Or something like that.