By Charlotte Webster-
Parents who smoke need training to help them discourage their children from following suit.
Most smoking parents lacks the skills and training to be firm with their young children who smoke at home, and many don’t know how to put their foot down and insist they don’t smoke at home. Parents who buy cigarettes for under aged children are bad parents, and should be fined. It is easy to say but there is no practical way to determine which parents supply their children with cigarettes.
The reality is that many smoking parents who are dealing with the hussle and bustle of life don’t know how to stop their rebellious children from smoking in the house. Many parents I have spoken to in the course of discussing education and children, admit this problem every time their young kid throws themselves on a chair in their sitting room and lights up a cigarette as though they are relaxing with their age mates. Underage smoking begins when young children see their class mates smoking and want to fit in, or when their parents smoke in their presence.
No parent can force a child not to smoke, especially in their absence. What should be expected of every strong and mature parent is not to turn a blind eye to young children who freely smoke in their presence. They need to put their foot down and make it clear such behaviour will not be tolerated.
The British government and the police are not doing enough to address the problem of under age smoking in Britain. Children from bad homes are influencing others from good home whens at schools.
Many parents are comfortably smoking in the presence of their thirteen year old children, and even younger. Many are going the extra step of actually providing them with cigarettes in what is a very irresponsible practise. When children of thirteen begin smoking cigarettes, it quickly progresses to soft drugs, then hard drugs in other cases. Many of such children become a source of negative influence to other children where parents, including those who smoke, refuse to allow their children smoke whilst they are so young.
Smoking parents tend to think that because they themselves smoke, it is alright for their young teenage children to smoke too. The fatal dangers of smoking are too serious to be taken lightly. Children deserve to be raised in a world in which their minds are not polluted too early because of the negligent behaviour of parents, and the effects their negligence has on other children through their own children