Page 201 - The Intentional Parent

birthday. Some of the statistics on kids and smoking suggest that the fastest growing population of new smokers is preteen and teenage girls. The first place to look for what might be influencing your child is right at home. Do either you or your husband smoke? If so, you have been providing a model for his smoking for the past ten years.
Unknowingly, you might have even provided him with his first cigarette or incentivized him to vape.
If you do smoke, encourage him to stop now, because waiting until he is older will make kicking the habit harder. This might be a good opportunity to ban cigarette smoking for everyone in the family. It is generally not helpful to try to scare kids into giving up cigarettes by showing them pictures of diseased lungs or telling stories of people who die of lung cancer or heart problems, but I usually go through the whole routine anyway. What I have found is that after kids finally do give up smoking, the reason they will give is often, "I didn't want my lungs to be so black and disgusting.”
If you don't smoke, it is easy to ban cigarettes from the house and institute a consequence like grounding if you catch him again. One parent I know sent her twelve-year-old daughter to the library to do a report on smoking. She couldn't be positive that doing the report was an adequate deterrent, but at least she was sure that her daughter got important information about the physical and emotional habits that cigarette smoking creates.
As with drinking, cigarette smoking comes under the influence of your child's peer group. That is why it is important to talk to your son about these things when he is very young.
The Intentional Parent by Peter J. Favaro, Ph.D. 201