It's everyone's child at risk

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Our kids live in a multitasking world. Let’s face it, we all do, and maybe our kids learn this at our busy knees. We hustle from one activity to the next, doing homework in the car on the way to practice, eating while catching up on work or grabbing food on the go. My kids text their friends almost exclusively these days. Protracted teen phone calls seem to have gone the way of the Dodo bird as skimming thumbs key out short bursts of words, anywhere, anytime. Given their wired hectic world, it’s no wonder our teens think nothing of walking and texting, eating and texting and an ever increasing amount of driving and texting.

This activity has to rank up there as one of the most dangerous multitasking activities our teens engage in on a daily basis.

A study by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis, a part of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicate that in 2008, the largest age group of distracted drivers in 2008 were drivers younger than 20 years of age.

It’s been proven by various road safety studies that the use of cells phones while driving has increased road fatalities, but the act of texting while driving, which requires a different level of attention to the mobile device, increases the chance of a vehicular accident by 23 percent, says a Virginia Tech Driving Institute Study. 23%!! Not an insubstantial risk.

A few weeks ago, my husband met a young woman who told him that she was recently out of the hospital after multiple surgeries over the previous nine months. This young woman, just out of high school, then told him the surgeries had managed to save her legs but she was now paralyzed from the waist down and would probably never walk again. When he asked how it had happened, she relayed that she had been texting while driving and she had not seen the truck in front of her stop.

Our 15 year old son is constantly reminding us that he gets his permit to drive next year and ever since my husband told me about his encounter with this young woman, the normal anxiety of my teen being a new driver has definitely ramped up a notch. Teens think they are invincible, that nothing will harm them. Yet there was testimony, in the form of a girl bound to a wheelchair, proving that is not the case. We sat down and shared this girl’s story with our son and twelve year old daughter, in the hopes of connecting a very unfortunate circumstance with an all too common action. They heard us but I wonder if it was enough to make an impact.

We can do all we can to prepare them, tell them the what the right actions are, reinforce those messages with news and statistics, but maybe the most important thing we can do is show them. I know that as a busy working parent, I’ve done my share of talking on my cell phone while driving, with my kids in the car, shooting off a quick text while stopped at a red light. I also know that the tale of this young girl changed my views and behavior immediately. Because I wasn’t practicing what I was preaching and kids, teens especially, are quick to point out that level of hypocrisy. I’ve stopped talking on my cell without my headset while driving and incoming text messages are ignored until the car is parked. I want to be that message, not just vocalize the words, to my kids.

How do you, as a parent, reinforce the awareness of the inherent risks of texting and driving with your teen? Is discussing the dangers enough? Do you abide by your state’s cell phone use laws? Because it’s not just my child, or your child, at risk when someone texts and drives, it’s everyone’s child.

This week I'm participating, with this post, as a "“LG TextEd Ambassador”, in a discussion on the topic RBTL: Moms discuss teens and texting on BlogHer. We're talking about Teens and the Dangers of Texting. Please, go on over and see what other Mom's have to say, it's a topic for everyone. Chime on in with your thoughts, here or there.

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