Parent’s heartbreaking decision – compelled to terminate 13-year-old daughter’s participation in sleepover terror

The pain of unexpected, premature loss is a sorrow that is almost impossible to articulate. For Australian parents Andrea and Paul Haynes, that sorrow was amplified by a devastating and bewildering truth: they were forced to make the agonizing decision to end the life of their tiny 13-year-old daughter, Esra Haynes, due to her participation in a deadly, easily accessible social media fad known as “chroming.”

In a profoundly emotional interview on A Current Affair with host Ally Langdon, who herself struggled to hold back tears while speaking to the grieving parents, the world was given a raw, urgent look into the silent epidemic of inhalant abuse among teenagers. Esra, a child athlete described by her colleagues as “determined, fun, cheeky, and talented,” who co-captained her club and won a national aerobics championship, was a vibrant soul whose future was snatched in a single, fatal moment of adolescent risk-taking.

The Ordinary Night That Turned Catastrophic

For the Haynes family, the evening of March 31 was routine. Esra had gone to a friend’s house for a sleepover—a common, innocuous part of a teenager’s social life. “It was just her regular routine of going to hang out with her mates,” her mother, Andrea, told Langdon. “We always knew where she was and who she was with,” her father Paul affirmed.

The routine shattered with a phone call that every parent dreads: “It was one of those calls that no parent ever wants to get at that time of night, and we unhappily received it: ‘Come and grab your kid.'”

The emergency was immediate and catastrophic. Esra had sniffed an aerosol deodorant can in search of a rapid, fatal high. This chemical inhalation caused her to go into cardiac arrest and suffer severe brain damage.

Langdon noted that Esra’s companions, perhaps in denial or ignorance, initially thought she was suffering a panic attack. However, “after inhaling deodorant, her body was actually starting to shut down, she was in cardiac arrest, and no one at the sleepover used cardiac arrest” protocols. Andrea arrived at the scene as Esra was being revived, and it was the paramedics who informed the stunned mother that her daughter had been chroming—a term she had never heard of before.

I. The Physiological Assault: The Silent Killer “Chroming”

The term “chroming” is used to describe the intentional inhalation of chemical vapors, known as volatile substances, to achieve a brief state of euphoria or intoxication. While often romanticized as a fast high, the practice is a direct physiological assault on the central nervous system and the heart.

The Mechanism of Death

Esra’s strong heart and lungs offered her parents a fleeting hope for recovery, but the damage to her brain was immediate and irreversible. The chemical contents of aerosol deodorants, paint, hairspray, or permanent markers—the materials commonly used in chroming—are exceptionally toxic.

“Sudden Sniffing Death”: Inhalants can directly cause cardiac arrest, a phenomenon known as “Sudden Sniffing Death” (SSD). The chemicals, particularly hydrocarbons and fluorocarbons (found in aerosols), sensitize the heart muscle to adrenaline. A sudden surge of adrenaline—triggered by fear, running, or sudden activity—can cause immediate and fatal cardiac arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat), which is what occurred in Esra’s case.
Brain Damage: The chemicals rapidly displace oxygen in the lungs, causing asphyxia and starvation of the brain’s oxygen supply. Furthermore, the toxic chemicals themselves destroy the fatty tissue surrounding brain cells. In Esra’s case, the resulting lack of oxygen and the chemical assault led to a brain injury that was devastatingly deemed “beyond repair.”

Since 2009, numerous children have perished in Australia and other parts of the world as a result of the concerning chroming trend, which can also lead to organ failure and seizures.

II. The Agony of the Decision: Eight Days on Life Support

The medical reality of Esra’s condition forced Paul and Andrea Haynes into an impossible ethical and emotional quandary: the decision to turn off the machine after eight agonizing days of life support.

The Ultimate Act of Parental Love

Her parents described the agony of killing their daughter while struggling to speak and recalling their darkest day.

The Final Goodbyes: “It was a very, very difficult thing to do to such a young soul,” Esra’s father stated as he described bringing relatives and friends to the hospital for their final goodbyes. The family performed the ultimate, heartbreaking act of intimacy: “She was placed on a bed so that we could lie with her. We cuddled her right up till the death.”
The Irrevocable Scars: Paul later confessed to Langdon, “We’ve got images in our heads that will never be erased, you know, of what we were confronted with. Our gut was ripped out.” The couple is now battling trauma, insomnia, and grief, stating, “We haven’t slept, we haven’t eaten, we haven’t smiled—we aren’t ourselves.”

The intensity of the parents’ anguish was so overwhelming that Ally Langdon, a mother of two young children, herself lost control of her emotions and began crying during the interview. The grief was not just personal; it was a devastating trauma that has “touched the entire community, not just us.”

III. The Mission: Turning Grief into Urgent Awareness

Having experienced firsthand the lethal, silent threat of chroming—a trend they never knew existed until it killed their daughter—Paul and Andrea Haynes have dedicated themselves to turning their grief into an urgent, public awareness campaign.

Regret and the Need for Direct Education

Paul articulated the profound regret of not being educated about chroming when Esra was still alive, highlighting the gap in parental knowledge. “If we had been educated and the word had gotten out, we would have definitely had the discussion around our kitchen table.”

The problem lies in the nature of viral trends:

Social Media as the Source: Chroming is popular among teenagers precisely because it is easily accomplished with store-bought materials and is spread rapidly through social media—a source that provides a dangerous, glorified, and wholly inaccurate depiction of the risks.
The Call for Direct Action: Paul’s mission is to bypass the unreliable nature of peer-to-peer and social media education. “We need to ramp it up and let these kids get the information firsthand, not through friends or social media—then they’ll get the right advice right away.”

A Call to Parental Responsibility

The Haynes’ message is a desperate plea to parents worldwide to overcome discomfort and initiate the conversation immediately.

The Conversation Mandate: Paul insists: “(Parents) should sit down and talk to their children, and they should start the conversation gently.” He underscores their own ignorance: “We certainly had no idea what was going on.”
Materials and Access: Parents need to be aware that the materials are ubiquitous and accessible: deodorant, paint, hairspray, or even permanent markers. These items, which sit openly in homes and store aisles, represent a hidden danger that must be addressed directly.

The Haynes family’s unimaginable pain, though born from a personal tragedy, has fueled a vital, universal mission. Their sacrifice ensures that the devastating lesson learned from Esra’s death can potentially save the lives of other children caught in the silent terror of a viral high.