3 Scary Trends: Is Your Teen Trying Them?
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I have two teenagers in the house and our home often rattles and rumbles with the hoof-beats of their teenage friends rambling through the house. We love that our home includes the lives of our children and their friends, but it has also made me a more diligent parent, keeping my ear to the ground of things parents of teens need to be aware. I consider it conscious parenting – teaching myself before I have to know about the risks my kids might face in the world. There are 3 scary trends for teens that keep surfacing in my parenting conversations and readings.
- Smoking Smarties – By Smarties I mean the candy that as a child I innocently was given on Halloween and Easter and never considered anything but eating the sugary discs. Kids today are now watching videos online that teach them how to crush the candy, keep it rolled, then smoke them as if they were real cigarettes. While there has not been determined to be a medical high kids get from these, there are several risk factors.
- The smoke from the burning roll and candy dust can cause lung infections, chronic coughs, and burning sensations.
- Some kids crush the candy into a fine powder and snort it, imitating what they imagine snorting Cocaine or other illegal drugs would look like. They do this in front of friends or video tape it and post it online for popularity gaining purposes – a status symbol.
- Besides the health risks, parents, doctors, law enforcement, and community members are all concerned that kids are using legal sweet treats to imitate the look and feel of illegal or harmful substances, which could be a small step on the very wrong road of substance use and abuse.
- I-Dosing – To be honest, when I heard of this digital drug use trend it brought to my mind the old debate about “hard rock” music and the negative effects on children because of the lyrics and hard instrumentals. Then I did a little more digging and found that the concerns are valid and something we as parents needs to understand more about in order to protect our kids from bigger issues.
- I-dosing is the trend of downloading music with binaural beats that have a unique tone programmed to feed through one ear of a headphone and a separate frequency that feeds to the other ear of a headphone.
- Teens download and listen to the music in attempts to alter their consciousness through these varying sound waves that challenge the brain’s system.
- Children have been reported to go into convulsions, have seizure-like activity, and mood changes while listening to these frequencies.
- The risk, as with smoking Smarties, is that this legal and easily accessible way to experiment with drug-like activities opens the doors for tweens and teens to experiment with more dangerous activities and substances.
- The channels and sites that post these videos are often visited by people who are not offering good advice or opportunities to our children.
- Candy Drinks – Just when I thought that kids had thought of everything, I heard of the trend of Gummy Bears being soaked in vodka for a candy treat that is anything but for kids.
- Teens are apparently taking bowls full of Gummy Bears, soaking the candies in vodka, and then consuming them.
- The candy lessens the bitterness of the alcohol for kids, but provides the same effects.
- Kids mistakenly think that this trend is cute and looks innocent, and even dare to eat their laced treats around adults because they figure we just haven’t caught on yet.
So – in the interest of catching on, pass these scary trends onto other parents. This isn’t to raise an alarm bell, but to provide parents with the knowledge that can help them keep kids safe and encourage them to make positive decisions. Knowledge is power – and sometimes candy isn’t as sweet as it appears.
Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BetterParenting/~3/lIbTOyz7X2g/
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