I was shopping recently when I overheard a conversation between two girls who appeared to be in middle school. One was complaining to her friend that every time she drank coffee, she felt sweaty and her heart raced. She said this while holding a jumbo-sized cup with a small mountain of whipped cream on top. Yikes!

It's not the first time I've seen kids with coffee drinks. Sure, you could compare coffee drinks to cola, and kids drink plenty of that too. But if you compare them per serving, coffee drinks have significantly more caffeine than most popular soft drinks.

What's worse, a recent study found 75% of children surveyed between the ages of 5 and 12 consumed caffeine every day. It's no surprise researchers concluded that the more caffeine kids consumed, the less they slept.

This study makes me nervous as a parent. We don't drink soft drinks at our house, but I rarely skip my morning coffee. It's part of my daily ritual. Now Kellan has definitely become interested in coffee. He asks to push the button on our coffee grinder every morning and he even likes to smell the contents of my mug. I tell him coffee is for grown-ups and he would definitely think it was "yucky" if he tried it.

Still, I wonder if this is an example of do as I say, not as I do. I don't think he's going to be downing a cup of coffee every morning by the time he's in grade school, but I do worry about him by the time he gets to the age of those girls I overheard.  

Am I worrying over nothing or is the appeal of coffee reaching kids at a younger age?