My 12 year old thinks that it is cool.
Everyone Smokes Dad.
My concern has escalated after he has wagged Maths and got caught smoking in the toilets.
Any advice will be considered...
Tiddly..

get him into spearfishing and he wont want to smoke becasue it will affect his ability (worked for me anyway)

Yep agreed myusername.... spearfishing cures you of many things.....and adds others

Tiddlywinks,
As for smoking
I smoked for a while..peer pressure and all at school, was what started it... what worked for me...lit up a Camel Plain (no filter) cigarrete... inhaled...then it felt like all the camels in the Sahara Desert ran down my throught and shat in my stomach.... god it was awful. May work..may not

How to cure addiction is simple..not easy but simple.... You need to create emotional pain attached to the event. (Not physical that leads to emotional upset), but rational mental pain that triggers emotional.
Simply put, if your twelve year old was to truly see what smoking does in real life with some one of emotional value to him, eg aunt, uncle, very close friend etc then this has true emotional attachment.
Our subconcious mind (thoughts and habit) is programed to lead away from all pain regards less of what this is. It is linked too the "flight or fight" trigger in our mind.

This is what so many people will not exercise and yet own gym memberships... the "Pain" of exercise is greater that the rewards of exercise. When I say pain, I refer to such thing asT
Time to get there
What If i am not as good looking / strong as / to fat / to skinny....etc
I am too busy to exercise.

If some one cannot get over the "feeling" attached to triggers as above then all the logical reason exercise will go out the window and the couch and TV will get a good workout.

You need to figue out emotional attachment so strong that it attaches a stronger pain to smoking that will overide the "peer pressure" to look cool.
At present, looking cool (or more importantly the fear of not looking cool / rejection) has greater pain for your son that the concept of death.

By the way, death is not motivation for the larger percentage of the population.
We are born with only two fears, the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. All other fears are based on emotional encounters. The two next fears, that of rejection and that of failure are the next major fears that people have and then comes death, hence we will allways give into "peer pressure" first... UNLESS we are faced with iminent and immediate death, hence why your son smokes. (please do not threaten your son with death or physical pain it won't work anyway as i am sure you love him (like i do mine) and he knows deep down you will not do that... I am a father like you and my son is my greatest joy in life).

As an example and this is real life and worked!
There is a man who smoked all his life and has had several heart bypasses and still smoked. Doctors said.. "you will die" this year and the reply was "well it might as well be from this, you have to die of something, righ doc?". This conversation was four years ago there-abouts and this gentleman was 62years old!...(not old enough to die in my opionion). Having a concerned family and having sought out this information, it was known that this man was very fond of his son and that of his grandchildren, as they are of he.
What was done was seen by some to be blackmail. The son, spoke to his then 62yr old Father and said "Dad you have two options to choose from and they will be yours to make. You can continue to smoke and die by christmas or you can stop and see your family, your grandkids and we can grow old together. However, if you choose to still smoke, from this moment on you WILL NEVER hear from me, my wife or my children as I do not want to have to explain why poppy is in hospital or why poppy is in heaven dead". I will not put my children though this." The son went expressed his love for his father and hung up the phone.
After the fathers rage settled down and thought about it, and realising that in fact 4 days had passed and that his son to whom he spoke daily was not calling, he called his son. His son hung up on him!...
Cutting a long story short. Today that man is 66years old. has not smoked from that day and has a great relationship with his family.

Rejection and failure can be greater motivators in life, if used for positive outcomes.
In helping your son...smoke to you puke may work, if the emotion is strong enough that this is seen as something he may never want to do again. Mental respnse will allways out-do physical

You possibly guessed, yes the story is mine and I speak of my relatioship with my father.

I post this publically, simply in the effort that it may save a life.

Thank you

Climber

Don't give him any financial support, no lifts, no hangin with mates for a month or so. Tell him why this is happening. And if it happens again, it will go on for longer.
Don't give in. I've mates who started at that age, they HATE smoking, but they just can"t stop because they LOVE it at the same time.
I've never even tried one, the aweful smell is enough of a deterent.
Also say that it reduces the chances with the ladies, cause noone likes smoking smell.

Ps. Does Dad smoke?

try patches,

tell him you think smoking is, like, the coolest thing since david hasselhoff and carry on about it. Then the teenager will rebel against you and give up smoking.

or maybe that'd only work on me.

Tiddlywinks said...

My 12 year old thinks that it is cool.
Everyone Smokes Dad.

Here is the problem in the above quote. He thinks it's 'cool'.
In other words smoking (or drugs) makes a person part of the 'in crowd', 'with it' and in some way better than all the other 'ordinary' people.
If you can reverse that perception then the problem will go away by itself.

Kids hate doing anything if they think it is not 'cool'.
That's why bike helmets are made to look 'cool' even though the 'cool' look contributes nothing to the safety aspect.

So what can you do to open his eyes to how 'un cool' smoking is?
Continually point out all the negative aspects of it. When you see examples of it, point them out to him/her. (girls smoke just as much as boys. They think it keeps them slim.)
Make uncomplimentary remarks on the brown teeth, the stinky ash tray breath, wrinkled skin, whatever you can think of, every time the opportunity presents itself.

Pass the comment that you can always tell someone is not very smart if you see them smoking.

You should also let them know that they don't need to smoke to look 'cool' because they just naturally do anyway and smoking just ruins this.

Smoking only looks 'cool' to people that you really don't want to be 'cool' with in the same way that the use of any drug is only 'cool' to another loser or drug addict.

The world is not made great by drug addicts of any description be they alcoholics, nicotine addicts, crack heads, pot heads, etc. They are just another burden for society to bear in either medical costs or to mop up the wreckage afterwards.

(apologies to all you crack heads, pot heads, alcoholics and smokers.)

Do what my mum did for me @14. Went to the docs with a chest infection, and was told that if I smoked, I'd be dead by 20!

(I might've been a little more naive than your young bloke)

my dad used the buckle end of his belt.... then got me a pack of white ox and made me smoke till i was pretty sick.
yep it worked i gave up about 20 years after that.

its usually the friends that are the biggest influence i reckon,smarten them up and you're halfway there

Tell him that you will buy him a car when he is 17/18 if he is not smoking by that age. and he can keep the car for as long as he doesnt smoke....
having a car is way cooler at that age than smoking.