It's important to teach your children about the dangers of smoking. Smoking is addictive and will hurt your children's health. But, we also know how hard it can be to compete with advertising that seems to be everywhere, glamorizing smoking and making it appear to be the norm. Children and teens try using tobacco for a number of reasons, including trying to feel grown up, to fit in and belong (sometimes due to peer pressure), to relax and feel good, to take risks and rebel, and to satisfy curiosity. The bottom line is that your children need your help to never start or to quit smoking. Parents really can make a difference!

What Parents Can Do

Here are some things you can do to help your children avoid the dangers of smoking.

• Talk openly with your children about the health effects of smoking. Giving examples of family members or friends who have suffered from smoking-related illnesses or death can make the effects of smoking seem more real.

• Keep the lines of communication open. Develop a trusting and comfortable relationship with your children where you can talk honestly about important issues like smoking. This includes being a good listener. When your children feel comfortable talking with you, chances are they will be more likely to tell you if they've started smoking, or if they have been pressured to smoke.

• Spend quality time with your children every week. Eating meals together is a great way to relax and talk about the day. Did you know that children whose families eat together at least 5 times a week are less likely to be involved with drugs and alcohol?

• Get to know your children's friends, and where and how they are spending their time. This will help you know when to step in and give your children guidance and support.

• Teach your children how to say NO to tobacco. Every day, your children can be faced with opportunities to use tobacco. Talk with them about ways they can let their friends know they don't want to smoke.

• Be a good role model - don't smoke and quit if you do! Teens who have smoking parents may find it hard to justify never smoking or quitting smoking. What you do affects your children more than you might think.

• Set rules and consequences for breaking them. This includes curfews, which can help kids handle peer pressure to smoke.

• Praise your children regularly and show affection. This will help your children to believe in themselves, and feel good about who they are.

Additional information on how parents can protect their kids from tobacco:

Publications

1.   4 Girls Health - The site, part of the National Women's Health Information Center (NWHIC), provides girls ages 10-16 with information on fitness, nutrition, stress management, relationships with friends and family, peer pressure, suicide, drugs, self-esteem, safety, and other topics in an interactive, user-friendly format.
   
   
2.   Dispelling the Myths About Tobacco - A Community Toolkit for Reducing Tobacco Use Among Women - This toolkit includes suggestions and ideas in the form of presentations, programs, media outreach, and other activities. It is organized into tabulated sections so that you can go quickly to the parts that fit your needs, your style, or your audience, and so that you can add, delete, highlight, and edit as you learn through practice. An important highlight is a 17-minute educational video, Women and Tobacco: Seven Deadly Myths, narrated by Christy Turlington.
   
   
3.   Find Out How to Keep Your Kids Tobacco, Alcohol, and Drug Free - This on-line fact sheet provides information geared towards parents on a variety of ways to help prevent kids from smoking.
   
   
4.   Got a Minute? Get Into Your Kid's Head - This is a social marketing kit to tackle teen tobacco use. Every day, 6,000 youth try cigarettes for the first time-and one out of three smokers will die from the addiction. Preteens who report they regularly eat meals, follow a family calendar, and discuss free-time activities with their parents are less likely to smoke, and more likely to live longer, healthier lives.
   
   
5.   Growing Up Drug Free: A Parent's Guide to Prevention - This publication contains information and resources for parents about what they can do to prevent their children from growing up to use drugs and alcohol.
   
   
6.   Parenting Skills: 21 Tips & Ideas to Help You Make a Difference - This concise e-book offers straightforward tips to develop parenting skills. There are ideas to help parents get involved with their child's daily routine, establish ground rules with their child.
   
   
7.   Surgeon General's Report: Women and Smoking Fact Sheet - Pattern of Tobacco Use Among Women and Girls - This publication contains information on the prevalence of smoking by young women, racial and ethnic groups, pregnant women, trying to quit and how to quit.
   
   
8.   Take the Smoke-Free Home Pledge - This brochure explains why smoking in the home can harm children, and encourages parents to quit smoking, or at the very least, commit to smoking outdoors. Taking the smoke-free home pledge can protect your children from secondhand smoke.
   
   
9. Teenage Girls as the Target of the Tobacco Industry (Copyright © ALA) - This fact sheet summarizes efforts by tobacco companies to make their products appeal to teenage girls. It explains why teenage girls are such an important market for tobacco companies, and what they do to addict girls.