Suspect your kid may be doing drugs? For $99, Last Chance K9 Service will bring a drug-sniffing dog in to your home to search for narcs in your teen's room.
The new Kentucky-based service is proving popular with parents who want to outsource the snooping part to a third party, lest they erode the trust of their kids.
Billboards advertising the service show a German shepherd "with a stick of dynamite in one nostril and a joint in the other."
Surprisingly, since the company launched in September, the gut hunch of most parents was bang on - with nine out of 10 searched homes turning up drugs, including heroin, cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamines and barbiturates.
Instead of immediately turning over the drugs to local police, K9 signs an agreement with parents that allows them to dispose of the drugs themselves and prevents the company from dealing with law enforcement agencies about their findings. Needless to say, police are slow to warm up to this idea.
“You should be an ally, not a military state,” said professor of applied psychology at New York University and the parenting author, Lawrence Balter.
“Teenagers will only just become more secretive if they feel like they’re being spied on. If parents act like police, I think kids just become more deceptive and sneaky.”
True, but if parents are the ones hiring the detective dog in the first place, then doesn't that prove the extent of their suspicion and mistrust that they are willing to pay someone to spy on their kids and rifle through their personal effects?
In some cases, just seeing the intimidating-looking dog is a sufficient scare tactic to get the message across to kids. In some cases, it sets the tone for a no-bullsh*t discussion between families.
Whether paranoid or proactive, K9 provides a radical approach to suspected drug abuse.
Lice treatment has long left parents scratching their heads.
Just when you think we've finally got the upper hand in the fight against the little hair critters, a new strain of "super lice" has been reported in the U.S. Detected in at least 25 states, the new bugs are proving resistant to the tried-and-tested lice products.
The problem, claims Toronto "lice removal expert" Shawnda Walker, is that over time lice have been overexposed to over-the-counter products and these have proven less effective.
Typically insecticides called pyrethroids are used to combat lice, but as American Chemical Society reported in August 2015 research, new strains of lice have mutated to resist conventional products.
Experts claim a proactive approach is the best way to deal with lice. Stop them in their tracks through weekly checks with a fine-toothed metal comb or a UV light like theNitview LED Lice Detection Device that makes lice easier to spot.
Before you panic or shave your children's heads, many of our bloggers and health experts have been there and done lice. Check out their top tips for a nit-free life.
Ah, no childhood is complete without a good home haircut story, it seems.
Many of us were born in a decade where the "bowl" or the "mushroom" was de rigeur. But what of those kids who get hold of the scissors and take drastic measures into their own hands?
Well, a viral YouTube video by Kyoot Kids both celebrates and laments the institution that is Kid Cuts Own Hair and Lives to Tell.
"I'll never touch daddy's razor again," says the unnamed boy, who will go down in haircut history as having inflicted the biggest butcher job on his own hair.
Seriously. It looks like his hairline has receded 50 years too soon. For some strange reason the boy stopped at the crown so you only really get the full effect when his father makes him do a 360.
Poor mite. He apologizes profusely to his dad, but you can tell in his eyes that he is already suffering. Mea culpa!
Rest assured, summer is around the corner and - though bearded and man-bunned hipsters are still going strong - the Bruce Willis is a passable look for boys. All dad has to do now is finish the job.
Girls are a much harder nut. Show of hands if you had bangs that weren't straight so you kept on trimming and trimming and trimming until they crept up to your hairline... Fortunately hair grows back.
If your kid is lucky, she ends up with a funky, lop-sided 'do that other girls at school will long to copycat.
Failing that, there's always that priceless invention: the hat.
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