Do any of you have kids who smoke?

Parent Cafe
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<p>Well, getting angry at him long-distance while I’m in New York and he’s in Vienna would definitely be a waste of time. Even apart from the facts that anger has never been a productive technique with him, that I’m not actually angry at him (upset and disappointed would be better words), and that the last thing I want to do is discourage him from calling/skyping me as frequently as he’s been doing (every couple of days) by engaging in a lot of nagging – let alone getting angry about this – when we speak. (Although when we skyped yesterday afternoon [my time] for more than an hour, I did mention the Crohn’s Disease risk, and told him I’d send him a link, and did come right out and say that this is really the first time in his whole life that I’ve been disappointed in something he’s done or doing, in a way that I hadn’t forgotten about two hours later. He said “really?” and I said I meant it; I hope he believes me.) </p>

<p>But I don’t want to, or plan to, do anything to detract from his enjoyment of his experience there. He happens to be having an amazing time so far, by the way.</p>

<p>He’ll be home for almost a month in December, though, and I plan to work on him continuously during that period! (Among other things, I’m a Jewish mother, de facto anyway, and, as such, am quite skilled at guilt-inducing techniques! I don’t generally like to do that, but all’s fair, etc.) </p>

<p>By the way, for all the “junkie B.S.” talk, I said I don’t know if he’s telling the truth about the “couple of cigarettes a day” frequency. But I should have added that I have no evidence whatsoever that he <em>isn’t</em> telling the truth. I’m extremely sensitive to the smell of tobacco, and even though I was with him (or in the same apartment with him) a great deal for two months, I never noticed the smell more than once or twice a day, and I know he didn’t do it in the apartment. Nor is it permitted in my former spouse’s house. And if I don’t know that he smokes more than he says, Idad certainly doesn’t. (The problem with your kind of rhetoric, Idad, at least where I and, I’m quite sure, my son are concerned, is that justified or not, it’s so heavy-handed that it smacks of nothing but “Reefer Madness.” And we all know how well that works.) </p>

<p>I’m not trying to suggest that this isn’t a serious issue. I wouldn’t have posted about it if I didn’t think it were. But exaggeration about the present extent of his habit isn’t helpful either. Not that I think it’ll necessarily be so easy for him to stop even if he does only smoke a couple of cigarettes a day. He’s always been a creature of habit. He never sucked his thumb, but he was an inveterate nail-biter when he was younger. And still sometimes does it. (He’d probably be very annoyed to find out that I revealed this, but he even used to bite his toenails – as well as the skin around both his toenails and fingernails, leading to a number of skin infections – when he was little. Oy.) He also used to crack his knuckles all the time in his early teens, and even his neck, both of which drove me absolutely nuts (“stop that! You’ll break your spine and be paralyzed for life!!!”), but thank God he got over that. Of course, I’d rather have him do that than smoke.</p>

<p>Thanks so much for all the support and helpful ideas, everyone. I really appreciate it.</p>

<p>PS: He was quite roly-poly when he was in 5th and 6th grade, but he’s been very skinny for years now – he weighs less than I do at this point – so I don’t think keeping weight off is a reason he smokes.</p>

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<p>I’ve heard from some people I work with that the book The Easy Way To Stop Smoking is a miracle, and makes you really want to quit. 100% success rate among people at my work.</p>

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<p><a href=“The%20problem%20with%20your%20kind%20of%20rhetoric,%20Idad,%20at%20least%20where%20I%20and,%20I’m%20quite%20sure,%20my%20son%20are%20concerned,%20is%20that%20justified%20or%20not,%20it’s%20so%20heavy-handed%20that%20it%20smacks%20of%20nothing%20but%20%22Reefer%20Madness.%22%20And%20we%20all%20know%20how%20well%20that%20works.”>quote</a>

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<p>Quite the contrary. I’m not the one advocating beating the kid over the head with health scares or being disappointed in him or guilt trips or any of that other stuff that absolutely will not work. He doesn’t smoke because he’s “a bad kid”. He smokes because he got caught in a trap and now he’s addicted to the most addictive drug on the planet. He’s not the first and he’s not the last. </p>

<p>I’m advocating being ruthlessly honest with the kid. He’s a junkie. That’s what smoking is. It’s having your life controlled by a drug addiction. He probably doesn’t want to hear that. He’ll probably get mad as hell if anyone ever tells him the truth. Good. I hope he does get mad. Most people don’t want to be junkies. There’s only one way out. Stop using the drug. Period. Simple as that. If he says he’s not addicted, then that should be so hard to just prove it. Right? Better now than when he’s fifty.</p>

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<p>It’s terrific. The best presentation of blowing the junkie myths of smoking out of the water I’ve seen. Superb at getting smokers to see that they aren’t “giving up” anything, but are gaining a vastly better life. I do think they probably discount the difficultly some people encounter with nicotine withdrawal, but that’s OK. You want smokers to believe that they can quit. [WhyQuit</a> - the Internet’s leading cold turkey quit smoking resource](<a href=“http://www.whyquit.com%5DWhyQuit”>http://www.whyquit.com) is the US equivalent and they do the best job of picking up on the first day of nicotine withdrawal and going through the several month transition that follows. Their audio or video podcast lessons did the trick for me, understanding what I was experiencing and giving me the confidence to deal with it. Honestly, quitting smoking is about like recovering from a broken arm. You just accept some discomfort as the price of desireable healing. You wouldn’t rip the cast off and say, “screw it, I’ll just live with a deformed arm” at the first itch. Same thing with nicotine withdrawal. Stay focused on where you want to end up.</p>

<p>BTW, Allen Carr also has an Easy Way web seminar – a 4 hour presentation for $149. I don’t think you have to spend a dime to quit smoking, but I’ve watched this with a buddy and it’s fantastic. For the price of 2 weeks of cigarettes, it’s probably a good value. Here’s a sample:</p>

<p>[Allen</a> Carr’s Easyway to Stop Smoking > Webcast > FREE clips > Video Example 2](<a href=“http://www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com/Webcast/FREEclips/VideoExample2/tabid/128/Default.aspx]Allen”>http://www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com/Webcast/FREEclips/VideoExample2/tabid/128/Default.aspx)</p>

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<p>Yup, my S does. </p>

<p>I just recently read him some of the entries on this tread. He just looked at me, said nothing and walked away. I later reminded him at dinner that both his father’s and mother’s grandfather died of lung cancer, his grandfather had emphysema, his grandmother has COPD and is on oxygen.</p>

<p>I HATE his smoking. I hated my father’s (his grandfather’s) and constantly argued with him.</p>

<p>But, ultimately, what can I do? Interestingly, we were always told we had the perfect son. Smart, no trouble, not a partier, top college.</p>

<p>I guess, from conversations with him, he wanted to be someone else. I think smoking made him feel part of some group, something different from him.</p>

<p>He’s had other issues as some of you are aware because of my threads or replies on threads. Before some of you suggest therapy, he has been in for several years. Can’t see much improvement. That’s a whole 'nother thread!</p>

<p>Hope your S gets it soon DoonaL. I can totally emphasize.</p>

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<p>[Joel’s</a> Library - Kids Just Don’t Get It](<a href=“http://www.whyquit.com/joel/Joel_07_05_kids_not_taught.html]Joel’s”>http://www.whyquit.com/joel/Joel_07_05_kids_not_taught.html)</p>

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<p>Here’s what nicotine addict college students have to say about smoking:</p>

<p><a href=“http://whyquit.com/Youth/Messages/Rachel.html[/url]”>http://whyquit.com/Youth/Messages/Rachel.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I saw a friend of mine this past weekend who I hadn’t seen in over three years. She had been a lifetime smoker and quit last November. I’m sure part of what motivated her was that her husband was diagnosed with a serious illness and she was forced to look at her own lifestyle (her doctor finally nagged at her long enough she said). So she quit but has gained probably 50 pounds. Not only that, but her blood pressure is high (I’m sure due to the weight), although it was completely normal while she was smoking. She is really at a point of not wanting to smoke, but speculates she’d lose the weight and bring her blood pressure back down if she started again. She has started doing some daily exercise, but obviously not enough to help with the weight. I told her she had to eliminate all the ‘white’ stuff from her diet, but her husband refuses to eat whole grains, etc., and she is not willing to pick that battle with him. </p>

<p>I just feel so bad for her.</p>

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<p>Quitting smoking can ultimately lead to signficant weight loss and improved fitness if the ex-smoker takes advantage of the opportunity to begin regular exercise. In fact, being able to exercise is one of the many benefits of becoming an ex-smoker.</p>

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<p>A couple of years before I quit, my future H would simply state he would like me to quit–but did not push. The guy friend in my office pulled out all the stops. It really took that kind of obnoxious in-your-face quality to really make me realize I was hurting myself. Maybe there’s someone in your life with whom you could work out a good cop/bad cop kind of scenario with your son.</p>

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<p>I’m wondering how your son would respond if you calmly asked him what this is about. In other words, besides the Nicotine, etc., what is it about that he would engage in what is essentially a high-risk behavior? What does he think is the reason he’s taken up smoking? What was the initial appeal? What was his thought process?</p>

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<p>Donna, my teenage daughter smokes and it is a huge disappointment. Many of her friends smoke too. She dances 25-30 hours per week and hopes to dance professionally. She says that it greatly relieves anxiety and helps keep her weight down (which is an obsession among dancers). Nobody smokes in my family including her cousins. When she was growing up she sometimes danced in professional dance productions and the professionals would sometimes be outside in the alley smoking. A lot of her dance teachers also smoke. I have tried everything but she won’t listen. Hopefully they will smarten up before they are 30 and give it up.
(and Donna, don’t listen to interesteddad)</p>

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<p>It’s not about being “smart”. It’s about being physically addicted to a drug. The brain chemistry changes from nicotine addiction are very well understood. This is not a radical theory.</p>

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<p>I read the higher the amount of formal education, the less likely one will be a smoker- but sorry, I can’t cite the work.</p>

<p>For my S, the best lesson was seeing some smokers. Early in his H.S. days, we drove by a community college on an unusually chilly Fall day, and we saw a group of 5 or 6 smokers huddled outside the school door. This particular group had some missing teeth, multiple tattoos, were shivering, and dressed in a way that would give the impression they were not prosperous. I pointed them out and said “Look! All the cool kids smoke.” Knowing what my S considers physically attractive, I knew this group would not appeal to him, and that he would not like to be thought of as one of this group.</p>

<p>One small thing I don’t get about DonnaL’s post 61. Donna has “no evidence” the kid isn’t smoking only 2 a day. Really? Donna already told us the kid was lying for some time about smoking at all; but eventually admitted it. Isn’t it likely that once it was finally out about smoking, the kid would try to minimize the amount? Isn’t that human nature? Especially after being caught lying about it? For me the previous lying would be evidence of current lying; not proof perhaps, but evidence.</p>

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<p>OT, but this really bugs me. She should be able to prepare the whole grains or whatever diet she wants, and he can eat it or not. It shouldn’t have to be a battle; he can cook his own dang white stuff. (though I do know that’s likely wishful thinking.)</p>

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<p>I do think focusing on the short term effects–smoking makes you less attractive to the majority of folks who don’t smoke and since 80% of adults don’t smoke, you’ve eliminated at least half of the possible candidates for a romantic relationship; it limits your employment opportunities, is expensive, etc., works better with young people than dying young does. </p>

<p>However, one of my kid’s friends threw out his cigarettes and never smoked again after going to that “Bodies” exhibit. Apparently, when he saw up close and personal what smoking did to a lung it got through to him in a way nothing else had. So…maybe when he’s home in December, you might try that.</p>

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<p>In fairness to the kid, you can’t look at his smoking in terms of “good or bad”, or “smart or dumb” or “lying or not lying”. That is attributing rational characteristics to the decision to smoke nicotine all day, every day, for his entire life. It’s a drug addiction. Rational considerations cannot and do not even enter the picture as long as he is actively addicted to and using the drug. Many nicotine addicts lie to themselves about how much they smoke. There are many smokers who swear they aren’t smokers. There are smokers who swear they have quit or “almost quit”. Heck, Barack Obama has been smoking for over two years since he “quit”. He says he is “90% cured”. You can’t be 90% cured of nicotine addiction. One cigarette hijacks over 80% of the nicotine brain receptors for over three hours (the hijacking of the brain receptors being the underlying cause of the addiction).</p>

<p>The whole addiction is a lie. It has to be. Again, smokers aren’t stupid. They know that smoking will kill them. Yet, they smoke (because they physically need the drug), so in between is a whole web of lies, rationalizations, and denials – to themselves. Whatever it takes to get the drug. The social stigma may be different than with a heroin addict, but the addict’s need to center his life around the need to get the drug is the same. For example, nicotine addicts don’t go to movies because two hours is too long to go without the drug. That’s why family members nagging and so forth seldom works. </p>

<p>Now, obviously there is a progression in the addiction and a college kid may (or may not) be very far along that progression in terms of arranging his entire schedule around smoking.</p>

<p>I know that you guys think I’m being “mean”, but from what I’ve seen, the most effective way to get to a kid who is smoking is to make them see that they are drug addicts, that being a drug addict is a horrible way to live, and that they will be shunned by the vast majority of their own peers as a smoker in the 21st century. They will not like the truth of the situation, but most people do not want to be junkies. The other crucial part of the equation (and here is where we as a society totally fail) is to communicate to the smoker that he really can quit and it’s not that hard if they simply make the decision to stop using the drug. Smokers need to be told that there is no monster under the bed. Instead, they get blasted with the message (from tobacco, from pharma, and from health agencies) that quitting smoking is a living hell, impossible without “help”. That’s a lie, too. 90% of the 40 or 50 million ex-smokers in the United States just stopped one day. That’s the message we should be sending. I quit the minute I believed that I could quit. I didn’t need to be told that I should quit; I already knew that. I needed to know that I could quit.</p>

<p>It’s also important not to endorse, or even accept, all the junkie lies, like when a smoker tells you it “relieves stress” and so forth. That’s all nonsense. Smoking does one thing and only one thing for the smoker: delivers the drug they need and the “pow” when that drug hits their brain eight seconds after the first puff. Just like a crack pipe.</p>

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<p>Obviously my son knows that it’s possible (for some people, anyway) to quit without much difficulty when they simply make the decision to stop – even after having smoked for many years – because he knows that’s exactly what I did. I hardly suffered at all from cravings, either. I never did quite understand the great physical sufferings some people go through after quitting, because that wasn’t my experience. (The times I had stopped before for relatively brief periods didn’t result from decisions to stop – every time I was hospitalized for illness and/or surgery while in my 20’s, and I think it was 8 or 9 times in total, I stopped while I was sick, and started again after the desire to smoke returned, which sometimes didn’t happen until a month or two after I was healthy again. The first time I actually decided to quit, I quit. And I believe that my son can do the same.)</p>

<p>I know you mean well, idad, but no matter how many times you keep repeating what you think is the most effective method to get a kid to quit, I know my son. You don’t. Taking the approach you advocate would be the worst and most counter-productive thing I could do. </p>

<p>As just one example, as aware he is of the harmful effects of smoking, he doesn’t “know” in any sense of the word that smoking will kill him. 20 year olds just don’t think that way. He doesn’t, and I didn’t. </p>

<p>Nor is it difficult for him to go two hours without smoking. I know for a fact that it isn’t difficult for him to go three days without smoking, because I know for a fact that he didn’t smoke while we were away in the Berkshires, and he was in no distress whatsoever. (He’s not that good at hiding it when he’s having a problem with something.)</p>

<p>I’m not going to say things to him that I know to be untrue about how he feels or what he knows, because if I say one thing that’s clearly untrue, it may well cause him to reject things I say that are true.</p>

<p>I’ll try it my way in December, and see if I can make an impression.</p>

<p>PS: Good point, younghoss. Of course, it’s also human nature to hope that things aren’t quite as dire yet as they could be.</p>

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<p>What? "In fairness to the kid, you can’t look at his smoking in terms of “good or bad”, or “smart or dumb” or “lying or not lying”. "(from post 75). Why is that fair?<br>
If a child or young adult is questioned by a parent whether he is a cigarette smoker or not, there are only 2 truthful answers. There can be degrees, if he says yes. There is such a thing as a light smoker or a heavy smoker, but both types of smokers are smokers.</p>

<p>I made no judgment on good, bad, smart or dumb, but if a person tells me they do not smoke, but later admit they were a light smoker, then they have lied to me.</p>

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<p>By the way, after all these posts, I don’t believe anyone has responded who smokes him or herself. Is smoking so rare these days that there are really no CC parents who are current smokers (whether or not their kids smoke), or are parents who smoke embarrassed to post because they’re afraid they’d be judged and condemned if they did so?</p>

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<p>That’s because there aren’t any great physical sufferings. That’s all part of the mythology and junkie lies that bombard smokers. The tobacco industry has been marketing the concept of quitting being a living hell for over half a century. Now, pharma throws their ad dollars into the the same message, with TV ads about smokers flying off the handle and so forth. In reality, quitting is a big deal if you think it’s going to be a big deal and no big deal if you think it’s not going to be a big deal.</p>

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<p>This is going to sound harsh and I apologize, but I don’t specifically care about your son and what you do or do not do in regards to his nicotine addiction. There are almost certainly other parents of smoking children and smokers reading this thread. I’m writing in the hopes that something I say gives just one of them the kick it takes to stop using the drug and release the ball n’ chain they drag around all day, every day, for their entire life, until it kills them.</p>

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<p>Non-smoker here, though my mom did three packs a day for many years until she had mini-strokes at age 47 and quit. My dad did the occasional cigarette and stopped in the mid-70s. My grandfather died of emphysema from decades of smoking.</p>

<p>Two of my siblings smoke (as do their spouses), as well as a niece and nephew (18 and 23, respectively). I had no desire to smoke. Just never appealed to me, even as a way to manage weight.</p>

<p>Donna, the heavy smokers in my family all started at 14-15 years old. Perhaps like alcohol, a later start may mean less heavy usage?</p>