If you have a child in elementary or middle school, you’ve likely seen or been asked to make “slime” at some point in the not-too-distant past.
Slime is yet another way for tweens to annoy and irritate the older generations. If you haven’t yet been introduced to it, consider yourself lucky!
Slime is a messier, smellier, and more expensive (but less noisy) cousin to the bottle flip. There are a variety of ways to create Slime, but its main ingredients are glue and Borax — that’s right, products straight out of every parent’s nightmares.
If you’re reading this right now and wondering if your kids are partaking in this recent craze, here are the top eight ways to tell if your child is a slime connoisseur …
1. All of the Tupperware in your home has mysteriously gone missing.
You cannot find a single container to store last night’s chicken pot pie. If this is the case, I would recommend checking your child’s bedroom — including, but not limited to: their backpack, underneath their bed, in their closet, all their drawers, and inside the big box with the sticky note that reads “Nothing To See Here.”
2. Your carpet is … well, discolored to say the least.
The following colors are a warning sign: Blue, pink, green, yellow, sparkly, glittery, or fluorescent. If there is even a single washcloth found anywhere in the living room, be concerned. Be very concerned.
3. Your child suddenly becomes blinged-out.
Get this: Kids are actually selling this stuff FOR CASH at school. It’s like black market silly putty. And it’s competitive. I witnessed my daughter and her friend making some the other night, and they were near tears because it was “too watery.”
“CALL REBECCA,” her friend cried, her head buried somewhere deep in the refrigerator. “She’ll know what to do,” she exclaimed. You’d have thought they were delivering a baby.
I’m way too old for this crap.
4. Your tween asks for any, or all, of the following:
Food coloring, Borax, salt, glue, cornstarch, Styrofoam or glitter. If you hear any of these ingredients being added to your grocery list, you can assume that a fair number of surfaces in your home are about to be destroyed.
5. You still have your Tupperware.
But it all smells of perfume mixed with laundry detergent.
6. A surface in your home is permanently stained.
This can be your countertop, your child’s bedsheets, your car mats … you name it. When you ask your child if this is a result of slime, they refuse to make eye contact. And walk away.
7. Your child takes an unusual interest in the kitchen.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
8. There has recently been a food fight in your home.
Slime can easily be rolled into a ball. Balls can be thrown. Eventually, a slime fight will start. Expect stained walls and lots of yelling.
Hopefully, like the bottle flip, this fad too shall pass. It may leave more stains in its wake — but in the scope of tween trends, it’s not too dangerous or destructive. So, if your tween comes home from school today and asks you to help them make some slime, do it. With all the possible ways this age group can spend their time, slime-making might be as innocent as it gets.
