Stop Smoking Way

Cigarette smoke — ugh. Just the thought makes me shudder. It’s the one scent that can truly drive me from mannered to raving lunatic. I can’t even walk by someone smoking on the sidewalk without my eyes watering and nose starting to hurt.

You see, I was pretty much born and raised on second-hand smoke. I was a preemie in 1970 and used to joke that I just couldn’t wait to escape my smoking mom’s body. As a child, I was constantly sick. A cold didn’t just last a few days for me. It would last for weeks and months. I’m fairly certain my lungs will never fully recover from a childhood trapped in smoke-filled rooms and cars.

So, last week, when a writer on parenting site Babble.com posed a simple enough question — Should I hide my smoking friends from my children? — it brought back all those memories.

The questioner seemed surprised that other parents were “shocked that I let people smoke in front of my kids” and still wrestled with the decision to allow smoking in front of her children. Much as I hate to admit it, she has a point.

We all know that smoking is bad both for the smoker and those around it. But if I had banned all smokers from ever seeing my kids, they wouldn’t have met their grandmother until several months ago when she finally quit (You go, Grammy!). We’d banish her outside to smoke, and she was only allowed to wear her smoke-filled coat then, not at any time near the boys. We kept a supply of mouthwash in the bathroom. After taking a smoke, she’d come in, brush her teeth, wash her mouth and play with the boys. In all that time, we never let the boys inside her house for more than a few minutes, in part because of the toxicity of the air.

Sometimes, they’d watch her from inside and ask what she was doing. We’d explain cigarettes and smoking and how we now know they are terrible for our health — something Grammy didn’t know when she started lighting up. They accepted that and moved on.

A friend once asked me whether she should tell a mom that her nanny was smoking in the car while driving the kids — including a baby — to preschool pickup. In that case, my instinct was “absolutely, the mom should know anything that affects her kids’ health.”

What’s your tolerance level for smoking around your children? Do you hide them from it or explain it? Would you tell another parent that a child care provider was smoking around his or her children or would you let it go?

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• Dope-smoking among teens down in many countries
• Eva Longoria caught smoking
• Commissioners OK Car Smoking Ban
• Why the Need to Quit Smoking?
• Canada says, “Stop Smoking!”

Tags: Cigarette Smoking, No Smoking