Should You Buy your Teen a Car?

Buying a teen their first car can be fun or very stressful. I watch a lot of court shows and quite often there are parents on the show that purchased their child a car or helped them. Of course the deal didn’t work out the way they hoped so they were in court. I know that this is a common thing for parents and children to experience when they buy from a private person, even more now with sites like Craigslist. Before you would sometimes see cars parked in parking lots with a for sale sign on them. You would call them and check out the car. Now it is easier to be scammed or to get a car for your teen that is unsafe because there is so much easier to find cars. My sister’s first car was a Sterling. Let me tell you that before she owned one I had never heard of Sterling cars. I knew it was British and I knew that it was really hard to find parts for. I am not sure why my dad bought her this car, but it ended up meeting a tragic end shortly after my sister received it. My sister was quite accident prone. They were never really serious accidents.  There was something about a lake but those details are still unknown to me. I think it rolled in to a lake? My sister is the perfect example why you shouldn’t buy a teen a brand new car.  A good used one is your best bet. How can you protect yourself though? Buying a car is a huge purchase. You really need to do your due diligence and make sure you get a good deal and a safe car for your child to drive.  

Check out my post about what to consider when buying your teen a used car.

Do you Know any Backseat Drivers?

I used to hang out with a group of friends and we would go places together. We would go out to eat all the time and even went on vacation once. It was a lot of fun most of the time, however one of my friends was a horrible back seat driver. He always would say he knew the best way to get somewhere. I sometimes wondered if he was listening to a police scanner or if he was tapped in to the traffic report around town. This was before apps and most smart phones. Sometimes he was right, but other times we would end up in construction or stuck in traffic. He really thought he was always right. It was pretty annoying to go places when he would start driving from the backseat. Sometimes we would have him drive because it was just plain easier. It was his fault if the traffic was heavy since he picked the route. He wasn’t really that bad, and he was a great guy so we put up with it. If he wasn’t driving he was in charge of the directions. However that wasn’t a perfect plan either, as we got lost a few times. Honestly it was fun though. I miss hanging out with them and even hearing the backseat driver chime in with his opinions about the best way there. I remember being excited once when I knew there was only one way to get somewhere.  

Through this experience I learned ways to deal with backseatdrivers and I can’t wait for you to check out my post.

Headphones and Hearing Loss in Teens

Blaring music is a standard teenage behavior, but chances are, your son or daughter doesn’t realize the potential damage they’re doing to their hearing. 81% of teens listen to music with earphones, but only 8% of adolescents believe that hearing loss is a major health concern.

And in fact, rates of hearing loss among teens today are about 30% higher than in the 1980s and 1990s. Also, 46% of teens show potential signs of hearing loss with occasional ringing, roaring, buzzing, or pain in their ears, and one in six teens report that they experience hearing loss symptoms some or all of the time.

Often, teens don’t realize the dangers of hearing loss because they fail to realize we only have a set number of hair cells in our ears. When sound travels into our ear and vibrates through various passageways, it ripples hair-like cells in our inner ear. Excessive noise kills the hair cells, and when enough of these hair cells die, we experience hearing loss.

Remind your teen that at full volume, digital music devices can make as much noise as a live rock concert, and it only takes eight minutes of listening to music at a very high volume to cause hearing loss. You should be able to hear someone speak to you at a conversational level from about three feet away; if you can’t, your headphones are too loud. You can also recommend the 60/60 rule to your teenager: listen to music for no more than 60 minutes at a time and at no more than 60% volume. Finally, caution your teenager against buying ear buds, which are closer to the ear drum and can cause more hearing loss when used.

As a parent, it’s your job to make sure that your teenager isn’t hurting himself. Make sure that your teenager is well-aware of the dangers of headphones so that they don’t run the risk of hearing loss, and who knows? Maybe hearing loss is the reason they haven’t been listening to you!

Teens are Drinking Hand Sanitizer to get Drunk

I was just watching the news. I have heard of teenagers, huffing paint, doing whip-its, which is with whipped cream cans, sniffing rubber cement, inhaling duster among other things while are all extremely dangerous. Now teenagers are drinking hand sanitizer.  I think that is disgusting. Hand Sanitizer is mostly ethanol alcohol so I guess they drink it to get drunk. It ends up having a really high proof, since the proof is the alcohol volume percentage times two. I think that is so sad, that kids feel that they need to get drunk so bad that they are drinking hand sanitizer.  Are they going to start making it hard to purchase? Of course a teen can walk in to the store and buy a bottle of hand sanitizer and the cashier will think nothing of it. Now, I am not sure why anyone would wanna drink it, have you smelled it? I have accidentally tasted hand sanitizer from using it and then eating and it is nasty.  It makes me so sad that kids will find any way they can to get high, or drunk without understanding the consequences.

I am not sure who gets the idea of doing these things. I know I grew up with Mr. Yuk and I know you aren’t supposed to drink things that aren’t drinks. I grew up knowing that there are poisons out there that will harm me and I learned not to drink things that are just handed to me. You don’t know what harm they can do. You don’t know if you will die.  You never know. Today, Noah and I were pretending his lamb was sick, so I gave him some imaginary medicine to give to her, well he ate it. I took the opportunity to tell him how you never take anyone else’s medicine; you only take medicine given to you by mommy or a doctor.  We have been talking about it a lot because he keeps asking for higher doses of Tylenol when he has a fever.

When I was 17, I met this girl who huffed rubber cement when she was 14 with her best friend. They went on a hayride that night, came back to one of the girls houses and huffed rubber cement and went to sleep, in the morning her best friend was dead. This is a very true and very sad story. No high or getting drunk is worth dying for or causing serious bodily harm.

Please talk to your children about the dangers of drinking hand sanitizer.

What is The 99?

What is The 99? It is a simulation of the bad choices that some teens make. It is a safe way to show them the consequences if they make the wrong choices in life. The number 99 is based on a statistic that 99 teenagers die each day from unnatural causes and bad choices such as drugs, fighting, suicide, domestic violence and car accidents. There are gruesome scenes of crack houses, where you find people overdosed and dead, car accidents where the teens are hanging out of the window bloody and mangled. It takes the haunted house to the next level. We all know there is no such a thing as Freddy Krueger or the wolfman, so when we go to those haunted houses they are just fun. The 99’s tent brings the haunted house to life, real life.

Sadly, most teens know someone who has overdosed or died from a car accident, they see their friends and themselves in the faces of the actors. This is a intense wakeup call for them. Normally, it just starts out with a little bit of drugs or drinking at a party, then it escalates where they are no longer in control and the drug or alcohol will take over. Those situations are very dangerous and they could lead to a whole host of problems and ultimately death. I urge you parents to take your teens or have them go with their friends and see The 99. What is the 99 travels all over the country. You can check on their website for when they might be in a town near you.