How to talk to kids about relatives who smoke?

May 21, 2013 4:51 PM

My children's adored grandmother is a smoker. She doesn't smoke in front of the kids but does take several smoke breaks a day, and while our two year old is oblivious, our four year old is probably close to figuring out what's up. Growing up, I had no relatives who smoked, and my parents pushed the "boy, smokers sure think they look cool, don't they look stupid though?" angle which worked fine on me. Obviously that isn't going to work in this case. How do you talk with young children about smoking as a Bad Thing when relatives smoke?
posted by rouftop to Human Relations (33 answers total)

Sigh. 'Isn't it sad? Poor Grammy. She knows how bad smoking is for her but she just can't seem to quit. I'm so glad that I never even tried it. It is so addictive. We should pray for her."
posted by myselfasme at 4:54 PM on May 21, 2013 [2 favorites]

"Sometimes good people make bad decisions. I think this is one of those times, and I bet Gram would say the same thing, maybe you should talk to her about it. Its okay to not like the decisions of people you love an admire, what is important is making the right decisions for yourself."
posted by Nickel Pickle at 4:58 PM on May 21, 2013 [2 favorites]

We always told our kids that smoking was bad, was an addiction and that Grandma was unable to quit. Sadly she died of lung cancer. None of my kids will smoke after that - they adored her and watching her illness was the best anti-smoking campaign of all time. Been 8 years and we all still miss her horribly. I have friends with young kids going through this now - you're unlikely to persuade your mom or MIL to quit but it's worth trying. Every milestone my kids hit that she missed aches - she didn't live to see any of them graduate from high school or college.

I hope you don't get that kind of example but I don't think it will be a problem to convey to your kids that smoking is a bad thing and that it's very very hard to quit.
posted by leslies at 4:59 PM on May 21, 2013 [7 favorites]

Everyone--I mean, everyone, Mom, both grammas, every aunt, the teachers behind the gym, the people on teevee and in movies and in magazines--everyone smoked when I was growing up. It smelled so gross that I never even tried a cigarette until I was 20, by which time I had absorbed from culture generally all the problems it causes. So, I think you're way over-thinking it.

If your child asks what it is, explain that it's a bad habit which never interested you. As your child gets older, you can include more specific information about the health risks and $$ associated with smoking. But smokers are ever more the cultural outliers, not because they're rebels or because it's daring and cool, but because it's less socially acceptable than ever.
posted by crush-onastick at 5:00 PM on May 21, 2013 [4 favorites]

Don't say anything bad directly about Grandma. Instead, point out others outside the family as examples of people making poor choices. The kids will figure it out on their own.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:05 PM on May 21, 2013 [2 favorites]

My parents pushed the "boy, smokers sure think they look cool, don't they look stupid though?" angle which worked fine on me.

My parents pushed the somewhat kinder, "Boy, smokers really wish they could quit but it's so hard that most of them can't, isn't it sad that they're stuck with that bad habit? Boy, aren't we lucky we never started?" angle and it worked super well on me, totally recommended for a beloved grandmother.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 5:07 PM on May 21, 2013 [15 favorites]

I think this is one of those times, and I bet Gram would say the same thing, maybe you should talk to her about it.

I'm sure mileage varies according to family, but: By the time grandkids came around, my mom had heard everything from everyone, and she still couldn't quit smoking. Encouraging my daughter to do something like this would not have gone over well. At all.

We went the general route that most people are describing -- sometimes people make bad decisions that aren't easily fixed, and it's sad. The eventual outcome illustrated those points.
posted by gnomeloaf at 5:18 PM on May 21, 2013

I would personally just address it as a 'bad habit' and not say anything harsher than that. Societal mores will do the rest. Even in the last ten years, things have changed so much. When I was a freshman in college in 1999, /everyone/ was smoking. Now, not so much. Having been a shy little college student, I still regret not having a pack of cigs on me when I was approached for one by a very attractive young lady at the bus stop one evening.
posted by Fukiyama at 5:23 PM on May 21, 2013 [2 favorites]

Yeah, you do NOT want to say anything like it looks stupid or is stupid: that's just another way to say the person smoking is themselves stupid. Not good! Stick with calling cigarettes stinky or a bad habit; addiction might be too strong a term for your little kids.

(And for what it's worth, the way my own parents --- both heavy smokers --- convinced me not to smoke was, when I was around 8 or so, my father let me take a drag on one of his: it was so awful I never even CONSIDERED taking up smoking. YMMV.)
posted by easily confused at 5:39 PM on May 21, 2013 [3 favorites]

Why do you have to address it with your kids at all? Not everything in life, especially having to do with our nearest and dearest' bad habits needs to be a teachable moment. My parents were oh-so-quick to point out and use as a cautionary tale every little problem in my relatives' lives, from my aunt's few extra pounds, to my grandmother's insistence on serving butter rather than margarine (back when butter was bad). I resented the hell out of them for doing that for/to me.

The news is out, smoking is bad, your kids will get it. Focus on how adorable grandma is. I sure wish my parents had done that instead.
posted by nanook at 5:52 PM on May 21, 2013 [23 favorites]

Kids think cigarettes are stinky and horrible. Don't worry about it, just say it's a grown-up habit and you don't like it.
posted by Sebmojo at 5:54 PM on May 21, 2013 [4 favorites]

My parents just laid it on me that Smoking Is Bad News, despite the fact that one my aunts smoked throughout my childhood.

I don't remember any awkward "but what about Aunt C?" conversations, but then I was a blindly opinionated kid and probably TOLD Aunt C to her face "you shouldn't smoke it's bad and you'll die" every time I saw her. Like the obnoxious know it all brat I was. (I'm talking here about when I was your daughter's age -- obviously as I got older I started to get some social awareness.)

There is, however, a hilarious family anecdote that features me telling some other family members, in the most solemn and earnest tone available to a kindergartener, that My Aunt C Is Going To Die Because She Smokes.

I'm pretty sure everyone always played my staunch earnestness about this for the lols and didn't worry too much about what my then-college aged literally-too-cool-for-school aunt felt about it. If anything they engineered my outspoken opinion on the matter in order to guilt her into quitting.
posted by Sara C. at 5:55 PM on May 21, 2013

My grandmother smoked, and my brother and I spent a lot of time at her house when we were young. My parents presented her smoking as an addiction, in the way Snarl Furillo mentioned -- as a thing she wished she could stop doing, because it was really bad for her, but it was too hard for her to quit. (When I was old enough to ask "Why?", they asked me to think about what it would be like to give up hot fudge sundaes for the rest of my life. Instant sympathy.)

I'd stay away from calling it "adult" (makes it seem mature) or "stupid" (makes it sound like you're calling their adored grandmother stupid).

The fact that my parents forbid my grandmother from smoking in our house is what really drove home the idea that smoking was not healthy. Well, that and the horrible smell.
posted by jaguar at 6:06 PM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

My gramma smoked her entire life and nobody tried to hide it from me. My mom said that gramma had a gross habit, like me picking my nose and wiping it on the carpet (shut up i was 5) which really only resulted in me thinking it was okay to pick my nose and wipe it on the carpet pretty much anywhere a person would smoke a cigarette.

tl;dr do your best but don't be surprised if your kids come to a completely different conclusion than the one you intended.
posted by elizardbits at 6:28 PM on May 21, 2013 [6 favorites]

Also recognize that despite best efforts, your child may still end up smoking, for reasons only god knows why. I grew up around a lot of educated, intellectual, middle-class people, who despite knowing full well how bad smoking is... ended up smoking.

It's really sad to me that people used to think that all we had to do was wait for everyone to realize the consequences smoking would have on your body, and everyone would stop and the tobacco companies would die out. Because no one today grows up thinking that smoking doesn't literally kill you, but people continue to pick up smoking.
posted by SollosQ at 6:46 PM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Not smoking is an important lesson, but not the only or even the main one you will be teaching here. Talking about their grandmother in a condescending and pitying way as if she is a baby or a sinner is also not a great lesson about how to treat people we love and respect, even those whose choices aren't healthy. Your kids aren't going to start smoking just because you acted respectful of grandma. Say nothing substantial until they are old enough to understand and then be matter of fact. "WHen grandma was younger, most people didn't know how dangerous smoking was, so they began to smoke and easily got into the habit. Now, even when these smokers do know it's very unhealthy, they find it's very difficult to stop because it is addictive. So that's why you shouldn't start, because it's so hard to quit and can make you really sick. I hope she decides to quit one day."
posted by third rail at 7:38 PM on May 21, 2013 [7 favorites]

Best answer: Oh, and I would add to the above: "That is why she doesn't smoke near you, because she loves you and is protecting you from the second hand smoke." That is the reason she's outside with her cigarette, not because SHAME ON GRANDMA.
posted by third rail at 7:46 PM on May 21, 2013 [22 favorites]

Been there, done that. My mom (who recently switched to Ecigarettes) would take several sneaky smoke breaks throughout the day when my kid was around. It's annoying but hey, smokers gonna smoke. What really fucking pissed us off, though, was when she started lying about it.

"Oh sweetie, grandma's just going to go check on the cats. Oh sweetie, I'm just stepping outside to look for something in my car. Oh sweetie...." Grrrrr. So when that started we had a come to Jesus meeting.

We told my mom that taking smoke breaks is fine, but just don't lie about it. The kid (who was around 2.5-3 at the time) knows what smoking is, knows it's not healthy, and that's that. If you're going to do it, and she's going to ask you about it, you need to just be up fucking front with her and not bullshit.

Things were pretty good until the last visit, when our kid told her grandmother "I have new rules about my room: no fake smoking (which is what she calls the Ecigarettes)". This was totally out of the blue and something we didn't coach the kid on at all (and my mom had not used her device in the kid's room at all), but holy shit this sent my mom off the cliff. Fuck it. The kid has rules about her room, and no fake smoking is one of them, deal with it.

So long story short: we told the grandma to just be prepared when the ultra-inquisitive kid starts asking questions, and cut out the bullshit lying finally.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 7:57 PM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'd just be careful to leave morality and any kind of judgment of their grandmother's intelligence or worth as a human being out of it. In cases like this, I always answered factually--what is a cigarette, why do people smoke them, what are the consequences of that. I wouldn't even get into, Oh, poor Grandma, she'd like to quit but she can't. Even if the four year old asks what is going on, he's not going to ask if he can have a cigarette, probably, and you have more than one opportunity to impress upon him that smoking isn't such a great idea.

And don't be too worried about it. There is SO MUCH in the culture about how awful and wrong smoking is, they're not going to miss it. If my kid is any example, they'll learn about it in kids' TV programming, school, on the playground, everywhere. It's really different from when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s and smoking still had some glamour. Because positive images of smoking aren't all over the culture like they were 30 years ago (Mad Men aside, but your four year old probably isn't watching that), it seems like kids these days don't see any allure at all, as far as I can tell. My kid doesn't even pretend to smoke her Popeye cigarettes! When I was little, if we didn't have candy cigarettes, we'd roll up white paper and use pencil crayons to draw on the filters and pretend that way. It's a whole other world now.
posted by looli at 7:58 PM on May 21, 2013 [2 favorites]

I don't smoke because I lived with smokers and couldn't wait to get out of the house. My husband's non-smoking mother harped on it so much (nearly daily threats that "if you kids start smoking, I swear I'll ..." fill in the blank with a random empty threat) that I suspect that he subconsciously started in part just to piss her off (he was a teenager at the time). Now he has a helluva time quitting, now that he's older and not immortal.

Sometimes people make bad decisions. Sometimes people have bad habits. I would just use language that your 4 year old can understand: sometimes we choose things even when we know we shouldn't. Sometimes people start something knowing it's bad and think that they can break a habit but it's really hard to do. Grandma loves you, and wants you to be healthy, so she smokes outside.

Gentleness is pretty effective. I never did drugs, because I remember listening to "Riders on the Storm" with my mom when I was 8, and asking why the lyrics were so weird. She replied, "Because Jim Morrison was on drugs when he wrote them, and drugs make you weird." I like the song, but that in and of itself was plenty enough deterrent.
posted by RogueTech at 8:14 PM on May 21, 2013

My parents laid on the "boy, aren't smokers stupid" angle really thick, which meant that when I *did* start smoking in high school, I didn't feel like I could tell them that I had done so, wanted to quit and was struggling. I smoked a lot longer than I might have if it hadn't been a secret thing. Whatever you do, leave your kids some room to fail and not feel terrible about it.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 8:41 PM on May 21, 2013 [5 favorites]

My Grandmother smoked. My parents never said anything about it, but as a kid the fact that she was outside shivering in the rain smoking while I was inside in the kitchen nomming on some awesome pancakes made me think she was kind of silly to be cold and wet and passing up pancakes to smoke.

As an adult the fact that she died of causes related to her smoking-induced emphysema made me think it was a poor life choice.

She was around all the time, I never thought about smoking. I don't think you need to worry too much about it...but I concur about not too actively judging others to your kids in order to give them some decision space for it to be "ok" to make decisions on their own.
posted by arnicae at 9:29 PM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

It is very good that so many parents discuss this with their children. Perhaps there might also be an opportunity to recognize the role of marketing and peer pressure on the generations who were more or less taught to believe that smoking was an adult, sophisticated, sexy, enjoyable and attractive activity. Also, not bad for you, ads featuring doctor types in white coats told us, especially if you smoked the right brand of filtered cigarettes. People were badly mislead about the dangers of smoking and at least one or two generations have paid and are paying the price for that. As one of those who smoked too long, I don't deny for a moment my own responsibility for the resultant medical problems; I assuredly earned them.

But I think in addition to knowledge about the dangers of smoking that parents can give their children today, there also might be a way to use the popularity and acceptance (and concealed dangers) of smoking in mid twentieth century as a cautionary tale about uncritically following the pack, or blithely doing whatever the cool kids do when faced with some other decisions in life. We wheezing geezers whose illnesses today are truly distressing to those who love us didn't sit down and think up cigarette smoking all by ourselves when we were angst-ridden teens, you know. Those 'Mad Men' were our pushers. And 'everybody' smoked.
posted by Anitanola at 11:51 PM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

As someone who grew up in a non-smoking household, was well educated against smoking - was Superman v Nick O'Teen just a UK thing? - and wasn't really exposed to it in real life...I could not WAIT to start smoking. (I blame Olivia Newton John in Grease.) I started at 15 and didn't quit til 31.

You can tell them whatever you like at 4, it might not have any affect when they're 15. But as others have said, the cool factor is dying out so by then hopefully they can make their own mind up that it's not a good thing to do. In the meantime I would just stick to a truth that a small child can understand and that has no moral judgement on anyone - Grandma smokes cigarettes but we don't because they taste yukky and make you sick.
posted by billiebee at 2:33 AM on May 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

I wouldn't worry too much about the smoking. The kids won' take your advice anyway, they are far more influenced by their peers. All you can do is point out the dangers and tfinancial cost. Alcohol is the biggest danger our young face. It is far too socially acceptable and the dangers are not well publicissed.
posted by BenPens at 4:18 AM on May 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

I don't remember my parents ever saying much about smoking. My grandparents did always go outside to smoke though. I'm sure my mom asked them to, but she didn't make a big production about it in front of us kids. The fact that my parents didn't make smoking into A Thing meant I got to make up my mind about it without getting tangled up in teenage rebellion stuff. I didn't like the way it smelled, so I stayed away from it initially. And all four of my grandparents died of lung cancer before I was done with college. That certainly helped me draw my own conclusions.
posted by colfax at 6:48 AM on May 22, 2013

Well, all of my grandparents smoked at one time. Grandpa Natie had a laryngectomy before I was born. (one of the first in the country). My Grandma Bell smoked, then she died of cancer when I was 6. Granny Fanny died of cancer when I was 12. Grandpa Boots died of lung cancer when I was 22.

I had a pretty good view of what a smoker's chances of getting cancer were. (100% in my world.)

So if your kids ask, simply say, "Some people have bad habits, and they wish they could break them, but it's very hard." No judgement. Kids are smart and will put it together.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 6:55 AM on May 22, 2013

My grandma smoked and my mom was (and still is) rather harsh about it -- to her and to everyone else.

Maybe you should have your kid ask Grandma about it if he's curious. Trying to quit myself, I can almost guarantee she'll tell him it's horrible and hateful and she wishes she could quit, so he should never start.
posted by mibo at 7:52 AM on May 22, 2013

> Maybe you should have your kid ask Grandma about it if he's curious.

Do not do this. As gnomeloaf says, she will have heard plenty about it and will not appreciate having her grandson join in what will feel like a campaign against her. (My wife is a grandmother who smokes—very little, and never while the grandkids are here—and while we have no idea what the kids' parents tell them about it, or even if it ever comes up, she certainly would not appreciate being grilled about it.)
posted by languagehat at 7:56 AM on May 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Since their grandma is older, the health problems will be showing up soon enough. Tsk-tsk her yellow teeth, coughing, and so on.

My beloved grandpa smoked from age 14 to 88, quitting two years before his death, and I was always aware of the cost to his health. He lived a long time... coughing up blood each morning.
posted by IAmBroom at 11:50 AM on May 22, 2013

I don't think you should be condescending or patronizing to your kids about their grandmother's smoking. My grandmother on my father's side smoked her entire life, and while it's something I remember very well from our visits with her when I was young (she passed away when I was eight), it never entered my mind that because she smoked, I would too. Smoking was something that old people did. I highly doubt that this will somehow influence your children to smoke.

Treat both your child and the grandmother with respect, and don't make her smoking some sort of lesson or lecture. She is a person, not a teaching tool. I'm sure that at some point I asked about my grandmother's habit, and my parents explained to me that when my grandmother was young, we did not know that smoking was dangerous, and that once you start smoking it is very hard to stop. No judgment or patronizing comments on my grandmother's intelligence, just a clear explanation of her situation.
posted by augustimagination at 12:45 PM on May 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure how much nuance a four or year old can grasp. Sometimes they just slot things in as (really) good or (really) bad and, grasp one reason, and make up the details themselves.

I would probably tell them it is a really old fashioned bad habit. Lots of people used to do it but then everyone realized it made everything stink and made everyone cough, sometimes those coughs don't go away. And a cough makes it no fun to run outside and play.
Maybe point out some stuff they can see that has been replaced by newer, better things (old cars, phones attached to walls, non flat TVs). Maybe get them to smell an ashtray or look at butt litter, then pick some flowers or clean some litter, or just list nicer smelling things. When they ask, say it's ok for old people to do old fashioned things like drive clunky cars, use phones on cords, listen to boring music and smoke but young people are supposed to find new and better ways to do things.

Talk of slow painful death can wait a few years. And by the time they are old enough to put their own money on the counter cigarettes will be to expensive for anyone to buy.
posted by K.P. at 1:09 PM on May 22, 2013

When I was a kid, my relatives who smoked (including my dad) all told me some variation of "It's a terrible, disgusting habit and really hard to quit - don't ever start". If Grandma is on board with that kind of sentiment the explanation might be better coming directly from her (or really, even if she isn't 100% on board for herself but is willing to say it for the kids, as I now suspect some of my relatives were).
posted by camyram at 8:46 AM on May 23, 2013