Beat the Peer Pressure of Smoking
You may feel that you have raised sensible, caring, intelligent children who will always take the right route in life because you have engrained this response into them right from the start. You have educated them, mentored them and guided them so that they have become strong minded young adults who make informed choices. What you may not have considered however, is the power of peer pressure. Groups of teenagers can be a powerful entity and collectively, a negative influence. As an adult, it's hard to remember how difficult it can be to go up against the masses. Do you remember the smartest child in your own class? The one who was the most popular and who everyone wanted to be like? Sometimes his word was law, and with lots of others supporting and encouraging every statement or decision made, his voice was one to be reckoned with.
Your own children, albeit almost grown up, will still have those people to contend with. Now peer pressure isn't always a bad thing, depending on the people and the situation, the power of a group can provide guidance and be a force of good, and of course, in a large group there can be safety in numbers after all. But what happens when the group starts to take up smoking? Whilst initially it may be just experimental but when others follow suit, this behavior then becomes endorsed and soon everyone in the group is lighting up.
It's hard for any teenager to see beyond the here and now and all of your warnings about the dangers of smoking can go right out of the window. Smoking can seem like an adult thing to do, no wonder they might be tempted. The fact that you know it's wrong and dangerous, doesn't matter, it's whether they heed the warnings and don't find it an attractive proposition.
From your parental prospective however, the last thing you want is for your children to fall into such an addictive trap, after all, you know how easy it would be for them to form an addictive response to cigarettes and start smoking regularly, damaging their health considerably. No caring parent wants that for their children but it's important to handle it correctly and not suddenly become too aggressive in your approach as your children will not react in the way that you hope.
Peer pressure happens irrespective of age, school, college and beyond, there is always the likelihood of your offspring being swayed by colleagues so it's important that they learn to make up their own mind about what is right for them. Smoking is a real danger however and you can only try and influence their decisions with hard facts and social debate. The last thing you want to do is to challenge them in a negative way or talk down to them. It doesn't take long for smoking to become the norm so try challenging them with some serious questions. Let them come to the right conclusions through careful discussion and through adult conversation where you let them know that you respect their rights but that the negatives against smoking far outweigh any positives through pressures from their friends.
Pressure from those friends can be overwhelming though so be prepared that it won't be a instant decision but all you can do is to plant the seeds of doubts in their minds and hope that the reality of the situation germinates and they will wise up to the dangers of smoking and stop. If you can treat your children like adults and provide a two way communication that is reasonable and fair, they are less likely to be swayed by others.
Knowing their own mind and caring about their health will be deciding factors. Don't be scared to tell them the truth about smoking addictions and how hazardous it is for their health. There is a mass of information available from doctors' surgeries and from health clinics. There is also an abundance of information on the Internet too, plenty to give them food for thought about their smoking habit. Clarifying that they are not only putting their own health at risk, but with the dangers of passive smoking, their habit is liable to affect others too, with potentially, quite serious side-effects . Hopefully, this approach will help them to come to their own decision and to make the right choice.