By Marisue Alsobrook

“Cancer, disease, risks to our health, fire safety concerns, all are important reasons for kids to not smokd.  Teen smoking problems are not easy to solve.  Again, as with most problems with our children, we need to examine our choice of approach and our own attitudes and behaviors.  Of course, the best cure is prevention.  Early childhood education and on-going teaching about the dangers of smoking far outweigh any consequences you can give to a teen who’s smoking.”  

Consequences for Teens Who Smoke

If you can consequence a teen out of smoking, please let me know, because after 250 kids in my home, I’ve never seen it happen.  I administered consequences for teens who smoked and never did I ever succeed with it.  They just got sneakier, and I was constantly worried about fire in the home.  Finally, when I began to see it as an addiction, and implemented a program of education about the dangers of smoking, and then set some rules for keeping it out of the house, we made a few inches of progress.  Inches.  

Teen Help 

To give your teen help, start with YOU.  Why are we mad and upset?  One reason might be that we don’t want to be smoking smoke!  We want our kids to be healthy, we don’t want to breathe the second-hand smoke, and we hate for them to waste our/their money.  Forget about “because I told them not to do it.”  Duh, they forgot that rule a long time ago!  When teaching parenting classes, I talked with many parents who just couldn’t step past the “It’s against my rules.  I said no” attitude.  Smoking is not about US, as parents.  It’s about them fitting in and then it’s about their addiction to tobacco.  Get the smoking facts, do some research and step out of your anger over them breaking the rules.

Parenting Battles 

Personally, I hate cigarettes.  But, I loved my kids.  I chose not to let this single issue split us apart.  Parents need to put themselves in the youth’s place.  Let’s say, for instance, that the parent has a weight problem and they were told “Lose weight right now.  Just lose it.  Stop eating what you shouldn’t eat and just lose the weight.”  Then, someone watched every bite you put in your mouth, and every step you didn’t take, and every exercise you didn’t participate in and gave you a report off and on, all day long, day after day, after day.   Of course you wouldn’t put up with it.  Consequences for smoking don’t work.  Consequences for smoking in the house, or for leaving the butts all over the porch, have a better chance.

It’s my suggestion to set some rules that might go something like this:  

1. I prefer you not to smoke.
2. There will be no smoking in the house.
3. I will not buy your cigarettes.
4. You will now earn your own money because I will not buy your cigarettes.
5. Encourage them to read material on the dangers of smoking and have discussions regularly about what they’ve read.

Self-Control

View smoking as an addiction, encourage them to talk to you about it, give them educational material to read about smoking as a health risk, and continue to love your child.  By that, I mean BE FRIENDLY.  Keep the lines of communication open, and know that no cigarette is worth them avoiding time with their parents.   

Be optimistic and be sneaky.  Get your teens involved in some physical activity and they will see for themselves how the coughing, and being out of breath takes away from their enjoyment of the game.  Sometimes, your best friend, is TIME. 

For me, it was SAVE THE KID, throw away the cigarette attitude.

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