How to Help a Teenager to Quit Smoking

 

Teens view smoking is as a way of appearing adult and sophisticated, many advertisements generally depict an aura of being cool, grown up and sophisticated. Apart from media pressure teens are also exposed to peer pressure. Friends say that smoking is cool and encourage their fiends to start a habit that can have serious consequences. Depending on the environment the child has been raised exposure to smoking can come from different avenues. If parents smoke then there is a good chance that a teen will follow in their footsteps.

 

Children and especially teens are extremely vulnerable and are easily influenced and it is up to parents, teachers and other responsible adults to ensure that children are made aware of the dangers of smoking.

 

Prevention is better than cure, true; however, even the best educated and well informed teen can slip through the cracks and become influenced to begin smoking. Often it will begin with “try it, one won’t hurt you”. One cigarette becomes two and before you know it, they’re addicted. Addictions are difficult to break once they have taken hold.

 

If you find out that your teen has started smoking you as a parent need spend time with your teen to encourage and help them to quit such a destructive habit.

 

If you want to get your teen off the smoking habit, then you need to communicate with him/her. It is important that you do not berate. shout or scream, but sit down and rationally try to understand why they began smoking, you need to encourage them to talk about the reasons they started, was it pressure of work at school, feeling that the don’t fit in the crowd, did they feel that they would feel cool and grown-up if they start smoking. You have to be patient and not critical, listen carefully and encourage them to talk about themselves.

 

Once you get to the reason he/she started smoking then you will be better equipped to be able to find a solution.

 

Here are some ideas to help and encourage your teen to quit smoking:

 

Write down or on a board write some reasons to quit smoking. You could make list something like this. Appeal to their vanity, teens are very conscious of how they appear to others and want to put their best face forward:

 

Reasons to quit:

 

1. Smoking makes your breath small bad. This is a big vanity point. The breath freshener industry makes millions out of people bad breath. Smoking exacerbates this problem.

 

2. Smoking will make your teeth turn yellow, leave nicotine stains on your fingers and fingernails which are hard to remove.

 

3. Smoking leaves your clothes smelling of tobacco, your hair and body will also smell. This is off putting, especially if they want to go on a date and their date does not smoke.