Hand Out of the Window
When I was driving my 6 year old daughter E and 4 year old son C home from soccer, it was a normal drive. Not much traffic and they weren’t complaining about anything, so we had a chance to just mellow out and look out of the window. E spots a hand out of the window and asked why that person was doing that (since she knows it’s not allowed in our car).
I told her that sometimes people do that to get some air or to just weigh their hands outside for fun. Then I looked a little bit closer and the hand out of the window was holding a cigarette. I ended up telling the kids that and of course, they asked what a cigarette was.I had to explain to them that a cigarette is something that people smoke to calm themselves down or to socialize, but it was a drug. It wasn’t good for people to do that and cigarettes were slowly kill the person who is doing it even if they don’t realize it in the first few years. In addition to that, people spend a lot of money on cigarettes and companies get really rich getting people addicted.
When I talk to my kids, I try not to sugarcoat anything. I try to explain things exactly how it works in the world. If they have follow up questions, I tend to answer them truthfully and honestly. The answers can be framed in a way where kids can understand and also not contain more gruesome truths. There is definitely enough truth there though for them to understand what is going on.
Both of them have tons of follow up questions, like why people smoke in the first place, why do people keep doing it, what is addiction, how much does it cost, and many other things. They also both said that they would never do it because it didn’t make any sense. I told them that things are really complicated as people grow up. There are other dynamics like peer pressure in play that forces, bad behavior and actions on others. I want them to know their sense of self and to be able to push back if they’re in those kinds of situations. It’s not good to start those habits because you don’t know how your body would react and sometimes it only takes one time to get a addicted.
The conversation ended up overflowing, and we were back home talking about it as well. My wife was wondering why I was talking about cigarettes with our kids and it was all because of someone smoking out of their car. I even role-played a little bit on what peer pressure felt like and my kid said no easily to each counterpoint and push from me. I hope they continue to keep those things in mind and to make sure that they don’t start smoking. It’s a gateway to many things and my wife tried to frame peer pressure a different way where it was more nudging instead of Hard selling and pressuring. There’s many ways where those things can happen and hopefully my kids are ready for it. All I can do is a parent is to try and make sure they are exposed to what it’s like and then hopefully they have the tools to say no.
