Jump to full article: MediLexicon (mx), 2009-09-02
Author: Source: Joel Schwarz University of Washington
Intro: Researchers have found new evidence showing that parents play a key role in whether or not their adolescent children who experiment with tobacco progress to become daily smokers before they graduate from high school.
A study published on-line and in the September issue of journal Pediatrics shows that parents can be a positive or negative influence on their children's future smoking habit.
"If parents really don't want their children to smoke they need to communicate that by establishing clear guidelines in their families about not smoking and discuss them with their school-age children." said Min Jung Kim, a research scientist with the University of Washington's Social Development Research Group and lead author of the study.
At the same time, parents can increase their children's chances of smoking by their own use of tobacco.
"If parents smoke, teens have more access to cigarettes than teens who have non-smoking parents. A second preventive measure for smoking parents is to quit smoking themselves," said Kim. . . .
She recommends that parents "should not ignore children's experimental smoking at any age because it put them at great risk of progressing to daily smoking." To do that, parents should:
* Set and enforce clear guideline about tobacco.
* Monitor to ensure that your children are following your guidelines.
* Know and monitor your children's friends.
* Provide clear, consistent and positive consequences for following those guidelines and appropriate, consistent negative consequences for violating them.
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