I’ll admit it. I’m a goodie-goodie. I’ve always been a rule follower and someone who plays it safe. So, the fact that I have never once put a cigarette in my mouth won’t surprise anyone who knows me. It also doesn’t exactly give me a lot of credibility in the experience department.
It hasn’t been so long that we’ve been a smoke-free state that I can’t remember being immersed in my fair share of smoke. But, I never once had interest in trying a cigarette after having it around me. In fact, to the contrary, I have always been turned off by smoking. Now, I realize that it’s highly unlikely that both of my daughters – now 2 and 6 - will have the same experience. In fact, several people whom I love dearly have been on-again, off-again smokers to this day. Odds are that my girls will want to give it a try at some point.
What DO I know about smoking in my limited experience? It’s illegal to purchase cigarettes under the age of eighteen. After that, those mysterious sticks become fair game. So, I’ve got the law on my side for 12 more years (rule follower, remember?), but what about after that? Worse yet, what if my girls are not the rule-following goodie-goodie (gasp!) that their mother was? What if they don’t only disobey my rules, but they also disobey the law?! (It happens, you know.) Enter panic.
Breathing resumed (this non-smoker can do that with ease), it appears to me that, at age 6, the message that smoking is harmful is out there. My eldest daughter generally seems to hold the basic opinion that smoking equals bad. Between school, kids’ TV programming, and the message and modeling from home, that much seems understood. But, what about when she sees my best friend smoke? Or smells it on a beloved relative? This brings me to the point I’ve found myself wanting to make most to my kids at this particular age: Smoking = Bad, but People Who Smoke ≠ Bad. The two often become one-in-the-same.
It might seem unlikely, but I find that knowing and loving people who smoke will be an advantage in my discussion of “the S word” with my kids. While I’m modeling with the choice not to smoke, our dear friends and family are lending the credible experience to my case that this is one experiment they ought to pass up. Because the friends and family we love are intelligent, kind, ambitious and have great values. But, they tried cigarettes for one reason or another. And now they can’t stop. They desperately want to. They’ve made repeated attempts to cease. But, they have failed to kick cigarettes out their doors once and for all. And they hate it.
I intend to tell my kids about how our friends started out enjoying the feeling they got from smoking, but in time, realized it was a mistake. It is proven to cause harm to your body. It’s irritating and harmful to the non-smokers you subject to your second-hand smoke. It’s expensive – from the cost of the cigarettes themselves to increased health insurance premiums. Smoking just plain stinks. But, most of all, it’s addicting. And if you change your mind about smoking later, it can be nearly impossible to stop. That’s not a risk worth taking.
It’s funny – so many of us swear we’ll never dole out the parental propaganda that our parents once did. But, here I am finding the wisdom in what my parents repeatedly told me: “It’s OK to make mistakes. Mistakes can be great. Just make sure that the mistakes you make aren’t going to change your life permanently. Make sure your mistakes are correctable.” From my perspective, smoking is one mistake that has a darn good chance of being life-changing. I’ve lived enough to see a lot of wonderful people unable to correct theirs. You know what seems like a lot less hassle? Not starting what you can’t stop. But, then, whoever liked listening to what a goodie-goodie had to say?
