With the holiday season upon us, no doubt we'll be enjoying a lot more festive food and cocktails.  This can be a concern for egg-nog sipping before driving adults but for kids enjoying holiday cheer as well.  If your teens are out and about and you worry about their ability to get behind the wheel, Math Mom Maria Lando shares an excellent suggestion in one of her recent blog posts: Give them a math problem to solve!  Now this ingenious solution is only effective if your kids follow the rules and call you before heading home.  But assuming they do, have a simple math problem (you can find a looong list on themathmom.com) on hand to verify their state of awareness. 

As a side note, Maria also included another idea using math to verify awareness, not when driving however, but when doing something that could have different consequences - sending email to the wrong person.  We've all been victims of that accidental click of the "send" key or hitting the "reply to all" button when we certainly did NOT want our reply to go to all...at all.   To keep yourself in check and your outgoing emails only going to the intended parties, she recommended the new Mail Googles application that requires you to do a math problem before hitting send.  Seriously - you might want to look into this especially if you send those late night emails that you've regretted sending in the morning.