Have a New Kid by Friday - Dr Kevin Leman [93]
There it is again: “B doesn’t happen until A is completed.”
It’s amazing how quiet your house can get when you take this tactic. And how respectful your child can become in a hurry.
Smoking
Smoking is a mountain. I ought to know; I used to smoke. At age 7 I tried out my first cigarette—a Viceroy—on the back of my friend Eddie’s bicycle, and I thought I was cooler than cool. I smoked all the way through high school and into college. A few months after I met Sande, who has now been my wife for 4 decades, I quit cold turkey because she hated it. For those of you who have struggled with smoking, that says a lot about my wife, doesn’t it?
I also know some parents today who think that smoking’s no big thing. They even allow their 15- to 16-year-old kids to smoke in the house and endure the secondhand smoke. They don’t even have a standard that says you can’t smoke in the house because they don’t want to offend their children or take away their rights.
That’s crazy, in my view. Do you know how bad secondhand smoke is for you? Not to mention that those parents are allowing their children to run their home—and ruin their own and others’ health.
When you catch a child smoking, have him do a 5-page research paper on the ills of smoking. The paper has to be handed in to you before the child can do any other activity he wants to do. In other words, life doesn’t continue until he’s done with the paper and you’ve had the time to read and approve it.
Why are some children drawn to smoking and others aren’t?
Psychologist Sigmund Freud had an interesting perspective on smoking. In summary, he said that people who smoked cigarettes were fixated at the oral stage of development. They didn’t get enough stimulation through nursing from their mother.
Psychologist Alfred Adler, whose thoughts were westernized by Rudolph Dreikurs in Children, the Challenge, said that people who smoke do so for one of two reasons: (1) they’re trying to draw attention to themselves, or (2) they’re stupid.
Whatever the reason, smoking is harmful to your body. If you think your child is smoking cigarettes, smoking pot, or doing drugs, it’s time to take action. Some parents I know wiretapped their own home to find out what was going on while they were gone for the weekend. Other parents checked the history button on the computer and read their child’s comments on MySpace. com.
“But, Dr. Leman,” you might be saying, “what about my child’s privacy?”
When it comes to the safety of your child, there are no privacy rights. If there is something going on, you are responsible to find out. You’re the parent.
If you believe that your child is smoking dope (meth/crack cocaine is very big today, and so is heroine in affluent neighbor-hoods), set up a doctor’s appointment for your child. Do it without any fanfare, but make sure the doctor knows (out of the child’s hearing) that you want a urinalysis done to see if there are any illegal drugs in her body.
If the results come back positively, you need to take action. Drugs are habit forming, so some kind of intervention might be necessary. Get a few key people together that your child respects, sit down with the child without any warning, and lay your cards on the table. Tell her that you know what is going on in her life. If your child drives the family car or her own car, all privileges are rescinded immediately because it is clear she is not responsible.
Where are the finances coming from that are supporting the smoking or drug habit? If from an allowance, discontinue that allowance immediately. If your child