Teenage smoking is a common misdemeanor among deviant children, and those without any record of delinquency. Proper parenting skills are desperately needed by parents and guardians in order to discern this habit early enough in order to put ways in place to mitigate it. Smoking and general drug abuse is common among children in their early teens, since this is the age at which teenage curiosity to experiment with drugs is at its peak. There are different ways that parents can use in order to escape witnessing their teenage children turn into full-fledged smokers.
No SmokingRole-modeling is the perfect way to lead a teenager into acceptable standards of behavior. A parent should present a good example to his or her children in their formative stages of development by becoming beacons of morality in their homes. Children emulate what they see around their environment, and so it becomes of the essence that parents set high moral standards by “walking the talk.” Parents who want their kids to quit smoking should not be smokers themselves, lest the children think that it is legitimate if they (kids) too smoked.
Dialogue should be initiated between a parent and a child in order to establish what the root cause of his or her smoking habit could be. An informal tone should be adopted by a parent or guardian, as a too formal a talk can render the whole process futile. A parent must not interrogate the child or try to reprimand him or her, since this would cloud every effort in trying to diagnose the cause of the teen’s smoking, or even lead to a child’s withdrawal from any familial talk. As a parent, you should endeavor to acquire deeper insights into why your teenage child smokes, which would help in putting a stop to the habit.
Accessing parenting resources could also be helpful for parents who are naive in matters of parenting. Such portals as thefamilycompass.com offer advice and tips on parenting. A lot of articles on juvenile behavior and teen-parenting topics can be accessed in that repository free-of-charge. No harm is done in relating to the experience of others on matters of parenting.
It is important therefore, that parents learn to become good examples, talk to their children, and find out from others the best practices as far as parenting is concerned.