Catalyst

Informed Families Catalyst

How to Help Your Child Succeed in Life

Posted by Informed Families on May 29, 2023 at 1:30 PM

When 13-year-old Dillon Reeves noticed his Michigan school bus driver’s head drop forward and her hands fall from the steering wheel, he raced to the front of the bus, turned the wheel to avoid hitting a car at the intersection, and hit the brakes.

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Topics: marijuana, brain development, social media, drugs, opioids, myths, fentanyl

Teens, Fentanyl, and Social Media—A Lethal Combination

Posted by Informed Families on May 20, 2023 at 4:36 PM

On Valentine’s Day, 2021, 19-year-old Logan Rachwal had an argument with his girlfriend and popped what he thought was Percocet, a painkiller that he bought on the social media app Snapchat. Logan fell asleep and never woke up.

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Topics: marijuana, brain development, social media, drugs, opioids, myths, fentanyl

The Right Way To Involve Your Child in Sports

Posted by Informed Families on December 22, 2022 at 5:32 PM

When famed soccer reporter Grant Wahl died suddenly during the World Cup earlier this month, his wife, physician Céline Gounder, told CBS News, “I want people to remember him as this kind, generous person.”

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Topics: parenting, teenagers, sports, teens, social media, Family Table Time

One Child’s Fentanyl Death

Posted by Informed Families on December 19, 2022 at 2:16 PM

“When you approach a dead body, there is a void there, and I’d never sensed that before, and that’s when my world was destroyed,” Air Force veteran and airline pilot Chris Didier told The Washington Post. His son seemed asleep at his desk.

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Topics: parenting, teenagers, teens, social media, fentanyl

Keep Your Kids From Taking Catfishers’ Bait

Posted by Informed Families on December 11, 2022 at 6:58 PM

The story was tragic. A former Virginia police officer drove nearly 3,000 miles to Riverside, California, to kidnap a teenage girl he had met online through “catfishing,” a type of online deception in which someone pretends to be someone else, especially to pursue fraudulent online romances.

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Topics: parenting, teenagers, teens, social media, valor

When Should You Give Your Child a Smartphone?

Posted by Informed Families on November 20, 2022 at 9:45 PM

“But Mom, everybody else has one!”

And of course, the classic parental response to this is, “If everyone else was jumping off the Empire State Building, does that mean you have to?”

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Topics: parenting, teenagers, teens, social media, smartphone

Snapchat’s Small Step Toward Helping Parents Monitor Teens Activity

Posted by Informed Families on November 13, 2022 at 4:47 PM

For years, parents have campaigned to get social media sites to help them keep their kids safe online. In order to stave off government action, some of these platforms have moved to offer safety features they say will help protect kids.

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Topics: parenting, teenagers, teens, social media

Marijuana Use Linked to Higher Hospitalizations

Posted by Informed Families on July 18, 2022 at 1:00 AM

As marijuana use becomes more common across the country, and more
jurisdictions legalize the recreational use of cannabis, the inherent dangers of the
drugs are too often minimized.

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Topics: parenting, teenagers, children, teens, social media, drugs

Why Do Teens Use Drugs?

Posted by Informed Families on July 5, 2022 at 8:00 AM

The teen years are times of turbulence when their bodies are changing radically, and their brains are pulling them away from the security of the family they’ve known their whole lives in preparation for living life as an independent adult.

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Topics: parenting, teenagers, children, teens, social media, drugs

Motivation: Tips for Making Your Child Care as Much as You Do

Posted by Informed Families on June 27, 2022 at 12:39 PM

If only our kids knew what we know as adults:

  • You have to work hard to achieve your goals.
  • You can’t let yourself be distracted.
  • You can’t solve your problems by hiding them in drugs or alcohol.
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Topics: parenting, teenagers, gaming, children, teens, social media

About Us

We teach people how to say no to drugs and how to make healthy choices. To reduce the demand for drugs, Informed Families has focused its efforts on educating and mobilizing the community, parents and young people in order to change attitudes. In this way we counteract the pressures in society that condone and promote drug and alcohol use and abuse. The organization educates thousands of families annually about how to stay drug and alcohol free through networking and a variety of programs and services .

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