An interesting article posted a few days ago on the BBC website, entitled “Children ask mums to stop smoking”, highlights the influence of children on parents behaviour, and more specifically mum’s smoking habits.
The main two statistics of importance mentioned are:
- Almost half of children whose mothers smoke have asked them to quit, a survey has found.
- The poll of 500 smoking mothers also found two-thirds felt guilty about spending money on cigarettes which could be used for their children
This might seems like blackmail, but how many of your friends did stop smoking during their pregnancy to provide their babies with the maximum health potential. Not to say, how often have you seen a husband or wife disregard their spouse request of doing something to just acknowlede their children request for the same.
It reminds me of what happened to a friend of a friend. One day as we were having dinner, we all noticed he was no longer smoking. When asked about it, Jim, just told us how his beloved daughter came to him crying one day. When asked what was she crying about? She just told him, she did not want him to die. A bit perplexed by his daughter’s comment Jim told her he did not want to die either and was even planning to live a long life. To which she replied, with all her innocence, “you smoke all the time, and smoking kills right?, so why are you trying to kill yourself”. This comment did make him think, and even though on the spot, he had all the explanations about why he was not attempting to kill himself, and did find all the right words to reconfort his daughter. It seems to remain in his thoughts for a while, and nagged him to take actions, which he did a few days later. His beloved daughter succeeded where his beloved wife failed….