"The Salt and Ice" Challenge: the Latest YouTube Craze

Children and young adults have been video taping themselves doing dangerous and harmful things for years now in order to obtain their fifteen minutes of fame on YouTube.  What parent will forget the deaths and injuries that occurred from things like "planking" or the Hanging Game.  The latest in the YouTube video craze is "The Salt and Ice Challenge" which involves putting salt and ice on bare skin and seeing how long one can stand to keep it there.  It mimics frostbite and can cause severe damage to the participant.  Pictures of one Pittsburgh teen can be found in the AOL headlines.  I will warn you, the pictures are not pretty, but the damage is most certainly permanent.

What can we do as parents to ensure that our children don't take the "Salt and Ice " Challenge, or attempt to get their fifteen minutes of fame in some other dangerous way?  Sit down with them and talk about the dangers of these stunts. Show them the pictures of this boys back and talk about how much pain he will be in for a long time.  Ask them if they can remember any of the "planker's" or hanging game victim's names who died trying to gain notoriety.  Point out that they are not remembered or famous, they are just dead.  Talk about other ways to gain the desired notoriety that are not dangerous:  inventions, sports achievements, academic accomplishments,

I am really concerned that society, with all of it's "reality" shows, is pushing our children toward more and more dangerous activities with the prize being 15 minutes of fame.  How many more children have to die before the social networks ban these dangerous videos?  No outlet for these videos to go viral and I bet money on the number of injuries drops dramaticly. 

Is Holding Up A Humiliating Sign An Appropriate Way to DisciplineYour Child?

Is holding up a humiliating sign an appropriate way to discipline your child?  Reshonda Tate Billingsley thinks so.  When her daughter posted pictures of herself with alcohol, she had her post a follow up picture of herself holding a sign that said "Since I want to post photos of me holding liquor I am obviously not ready for social media and will be taking a haitus until I learn what I should + should not post.  BYE BYE."  I am all for disciplining children, what I am not in favor of is humiliating them in that process.  Building a trusting and respectful relationship with your teenager is an uphill battle that can be obliterated in an instant when they feel that your action has humiliated them in the eyes of their friends.

I suggest that taking away their social networking priviliges and their phone will have the same results as the picture but avoid the humiliation and the irreparabled damage to your relationship.

Facebook Status Updates that Parent Should Be Concerned About

One of my readers, Melanie Slaugh, sent me this link entitled "10 Scary FaceBook Status Updates Parents Should Watch For." It provides good information for parents about what to look for, and be concerned about, with regard to the content of your child's social networking status. I think it is important to monitor what your child is doing on the internet. This may seem like an invasion of their privacy but, with all the predators and cyberbullies out there, I believe it is a parents job to keep their child safe in cyberspace.

http://www.myispfinder.org/ispblog/2011/10-scary-facebook-status-updates-parents-should-watch-for/