CHEESE
As if the world wasn't complicated enough, many children, as young as middle school, are struggling with a new peer pressure stemming from a recreational drug known as "cheese". Coined "cheese" by the middle school children addicted to this recreational drug, the brown power subtance is considered a starter to a more advanced process into recreational street drugs, including heroin and cocaine. As parents and educators, understanding the implication of "cheese" as a recreational drug, the symptoms for withdrawal and the issues facing children seeking rehabilitation, will provide for a more knowledgeable society.

DEA officials are investigating the growth of 'cheese,' a powder combination of heroin and Tylenol PM ingredients.  “Cheese” was first seen in the United States in 2006.  Recently, Dallas police and school officials have reported that many middle school children are using new combinations of recreational drugs. Police in Dallas have logged 78 incidents involving cheese in 11 middle and high schools, says Jeremy Liebbe, an investigator with the Dallas Independent School District Police Department.

Click here to watch a video on the effects of Cheese Heroin.
(Requires Windows Media Player)

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/92433/cheese_a_parents_guide_to_the_new_recreational.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-26-texas-heroin_x.htm

STRAWBERRY QUICK
A new type of methamphetamine has made it from the west coast to Nevada, and is spreading east. Police say a new form of methamphetamine is known as candy methamphetamine or “Strawberry Quick” on the streets. The drug is cooked and flavored to look a lot like rock candy.

The usual concern with this particular drug is with long-term addiction, but now the drug is becoming a problem with younger users. Younger users are more susceptible to overdosing, which could potentially cause them to end up in the emergency room.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/144391/new_candy_drug_hits_west_coast.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,269532,00.html

SALVIA
Salvia is a substance that has already been found in the Wichita metropolitan area.  Salvia Divinorum is a type of sage that commonly grows in many areas of Mexico. This plant traces back to ancient Aztec Indians for shamanic uses to produce powerful visuals, and to preform a sort of “Spiritual Healing.” A salvia experience can vary from the type of dosage and the way of ingestion.

If Salvia is smoked the main effects are experienced quickly. The most intense 'peak' is reached within a minute or so and lasts for about 1-5 minutes, followed by a gradual tapering back. At 5-10 minutes, less intense yet still appreciable effects typically persist, giving way to a returning sense of the everyday and familiar until back to baseline after about 15 to 20 minutes.

Today, The most popular way that people are using salvia to experience its mind blowing effects are to smoke the plant. Salvia divinorum can be purchased legally in a variety of different forums such as extracts, dried leaves, and fortified leaves. The traditional way to ingest salvia was by chewing the leaves and after about 15 minutes you would start to feel the beginning effects. However, if you smoke salvia, the effects are felt instantly within 15 seconds or less.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvia_divinorum
http://www.salvia-divinorum-scotland.co.uk/mediastories/20010715_sundaytimes.htm

We all can develop resilience, and we can help our children develop it as well. It involves behaviors, thoughts and actions that can be learned over time. Following are tips to building resilience. 

1. Make connections

Teach your child how to make friends, including the skill of empathy, or feeling another's pain. Encourage your child to be a friend in order to get friends. Build a strong family network to support your child through his or her inevitable disappointments and hurts. At school, watch to make sure that one child is not being isolated. Connecting with people provides social support and strengthens resilience. Some find comfort in connecting with a higher power, whether through organized religion or privately and you may wish to introduce your child to your own traditions of worship. 
2. Help your child by having him or her help others

Children who may feel helpless can be empowered by helping others. Engage your child in age-appropriate volunteer work, or ask for assistance yourself with some task that he or she can master. At school, brainstorm with children about ways they can help others. 
3. Maintain a daily routine

Sticking to a routine can be comforting to children, especially younger children who crave structure in their lives. Encourage your child to develop his or her own routines. 
4. Take a break

While it is important to stick to routines, endlessly worrying can be counter-productive. Teach your child how to focus on something besides what's worrying him. Be aware of what your child is exposed to that can be troubling, whether it be news, the Internet, or overheard conversations, and make sure your child takes a break from those things if they trouble her. Although schools are being held accountable for performance on standardized tests, build in unstructured time during the school day to allow children to be creative. 
5. Teach your child self-care

Make yourself a good example, and teach your child the importance of making time to eat properly, exercise and rest. Make sure your child has time to have fun, and make sure that your child hasn't scheduled every moment of his or her life with no "down time" to relax. Caring for oneself and even having fun will help your child stay balanced and better deal with stressful times. 
6. Move toward your goals

Teach your child to set reasonable goals and then to move toward them one step at a time. Moving toward that goal - even if it's a tiny step - and receiving praise for doing so will focus your child on what he or she has accomplished rather than on what hasn't been accomplished, and can help build the resilience to move forward in the face of challenges. At school, break down large assignments into small, achievable goals for younger children, and for older children, acknowledge accomplishments on the way to larger goals. 
7. Nurture a positive self-view

Help your child remember ways that he or she has successfully handled hardships in the past and then help him understand that these past challenges help him build the strength to handle future challenges. Help your child learn to trust himself to solve problems and make appropriate decisions. Teach your child to see the humor in life, and the ability to laugh at one's self. At school, help children see how their individual accomplishments contribute to the wellbeing of the class as a whole. 
8. Keep things in perspective and maintain a hopeful outlook

Even when your child is facing very painful events, help him look at the situation in a broader context and keep a long-term perspective. Although your child may be too young to consider a long-term look on his own, help him or her see that there is a future beyond the current situation and that the future can be good. An optimistic and positive outlook enables your child to see the good things in life and keep going even in the hardest times. In school, use history to show that life moves on after bad events. 
9. Look for opportunities for self-discovery

Tough times are often the times when children learn the most about themselves. Help your child take a look at how whatever he is facing can teach him "what he is made of." At school, consider leading discussions of what each student has learned after facing down a tough situation. 
10. Accept that change is part of living

Change often can be scary for children and teens. Help your child see that change is part of life and new goals can replace goals that have become unattainable. In school, point out how students have changed as they moved up in grade levels and discuss how that change has had an impact on the students.

By Shelia Raleigh, Counselor at Eisenhower Middle School

Did I get your attention? Good, because what I have to write about this month may be a bit sensitive to some of you and I apologize in advance, but as a parent myself I feel like this is something we all need to be aware of.

No, I didn’t misspell the words in the title. These are just some examples of the online names our kids are using. Some are worse, some are not. Children choose them as a sort of identification tool for themselves. Some of these names have sexual connotations, some have sports connections, some could have school or hobbies the kids may be interested in.

These on-line names are part of a popular mode of communication amongst teenagers these days called “blogging”. Blogging is online journaling. Entries are sent to a web server which automatically converts the pages making them available to the 24x7 worldwide web community. Some blog sites allow other bloggers to respond, thus creating “blogrings”. Blogrings are electronic neighborhoods that allow people who usually have a common interest to chat to one another.

Some people have multiple sites that they maintain. When you access one person’s site you can click on another subscription and go to the next person’s site and so on and so forth. There are sites from kids all over the world.  Public blog sites such as Xanga.com and Myspace.com are free for users.

Teens used to write their inner most thoughts and feelings in their private diaries stuffed under the bed and no one was allowed to read them. Imagine your hopes, dreams, details of a date, a crush, fight with a friend, the loneliness you felt at times, your frustration over something happening at school. Now they are posting everything on the web for all to see. What should be concerning to us is “who” is reading them. Law enforcement officials advise that sexual predators prey on teens who put every detail of their lives on these sites. They usually portray another teen and “get to know each other” via the web. They could even have “internet boyfriends or girlfriends”. Malicious things like cyber bullying can also occur on these sites. In myspace.com you can do a search for gender, age, relationship status, etc. This will pull up other people’s pictures that match what information you entered. Then you can see what they look like and contact them.

Kacie Woody, a 13 year old middle school student from Arkansas began talking with “Dave” after they met in a chat room for Christian teens. One night Kacie was home alone while her father, a police officer, worked the night shift. She received a phone call from “Dave”. What she didn’t know was that he was 47, not 18. He had traveled from his home in San Diego to Kacie’s home in Arkansas, planning for this specific night. As he spoke with her on the phone he stood right outside her house holding a rag soaked with chloroform. Kacie was abducted, sexually abused and killed.

Please don’t get me wrong not all of these sites are bad, there are some that are designed with tasteful pictures, music, poems, stories, etc. Blogging is relatively new. Parents don’t often understand the differences between email, instant messaging and blogging. They think that when their kids are on-line, they are simply “talking to their friends.” In reality bloggers are providing a great deal of intimate personal details about themselves, their friends and their families. The nature of blogging plays right into the hands of someone who may want to hurt or manipulate our kids. If you are worried that your child may be upset that you are “snooping”, it’s OK, that’s our right as parents to monitor what our kids may be up to, where they go and who they hang out with. My, gosh if they are afraid of what you might think when you read it, what do they think someone else may think?

By Julie Rosenbluth, MPH, CHES for American Council For Drug Education

You may have seen in recent headlines citing the death of several young children and teens caused by “the Choking Game”. Also known as the “pass out game”, “dreaming”, “pass out”, or “ghost”, you might even remember it or something like it from your childhood, as the concept has been around for a while. The primary goal is to cause a friend to literally choke or lose breath and feel a consciousness altering experience or a “high”. You may have thought it was a harmless game played at sleep-over parties or play dates but what you didn’t know is how dangerous and possibly deadly this game could get. 

What Is It
The Choking Game, as it has come to be called, is a game children play by compressing a friend’s chest or squeezing their neck to cut off the flow of oxygen. In the first step, the person being choked will feel light-headed due to the reduced blood flow, and lack of oxygen to the brain, causing a perceived “high”. Once the pressure to the chest or neck has been lifted the surge of blood back into the brain creates a perceived “rush”. 

The recent deaths and brain damage cases in the media are the result of the “game” gone awry. According to experts, a child playing this game could lose consciousness within a minute and die in as little as 2-4 minutes as the weight of their body further constricts blood and oxygen to the brain. 

Deaths or brain damage can occur when children try to induce the high by themselves. In many of these cases, children are constricting themselves with ties or belts. When the flow of oxygen is cut off they unintentionally pass out leaving no one to loosen the “noose” they have created and save them. The risk of brain damage or death is compounded when there is no one to relieve pressure, reintroduce the flow of oxygen and restore a child to consciousness. When first discovered these cases are often marked a suicide when in fact these children had no intention of killing themselves and were just “playing a game”.
Even children who play the game among friends are still at risk for permanent brain damage, harm to the retina, accidental fall from passing out, and death. In addition, if the child’s partner accidentally squeezes a small group of nerve cells in the neck, the heart can come to a complete stop. 
 

Who is Doing It
The age range of kids who most often participate in this behavior is 9-14 years. Many pre-teens and teens participate in this lethal game out of curiosity -- not rebellion, depression or anger. The game may be played by kids who are not outwardly at-risk --students who may do well in school, and are close with their families. To many kids, the Choking Game seems like a harmless way to get a rush. 

Signs and Symptoms
Parents and counselors should be on the look-out for:

• Reports of severe headaches
• Marks on the neck
• Bloodshot or red eyes
• Raspy breath
• (For parents) Belts, bags, ties found around the house and closed doors or an unusual need for privacy. 

What You Can Do

1. Teach students that this is not a game and that it’s extremely dangerous. Kids are fascinated by the fact that they can self-induce this type of high without using drugs. They know that it’s risky and dangerous -- that’s part of the allure of the game -- but few know that it can be deadly. 
2. Educate parents of the warning signs to look for.
3. Monitor school bathrooms, playgrounds, closets or closed classrooms, and other opportunities where students have to be alone together and could play the game
4. Understand that risk taking is a safe and natural part of growing up. Just like adults, for many kids and teens, risk taking is one way of relieving stress. Provide students with alternatives for safer risk taking. There are many activities like, skateboarding or rock climbing, which produce a safe natural endorphin or “high” for kids. 

Life Risks 

• Social – e.g. joining a club or group 
• Emotional – e.g. asking someone on a date or sharing feelings with friends 
• Physical – e.g. rock climbing 

• Academic – e.g. taking an advanced placement course 
• Athletic – e.g. trying out for a sports team 
• Extracurricular – e.g. running for student councils

• Volunteering – e.g. helping the elderly or homeless 
• Mentoring – e.g. working with younger children 
• Leading – e.g. starting a business or charity 

Don’t let them take their lives into their own hands.