Parents and Kids: Tobacco-free Tips

Parents and guardians can take the following actions to help their children stay or become tobacco-free: 

Be Smoke Free

• Set a good example and be a positive role model by not using tobacco.
• If you don't smoke, don't start!
• If you do smoke, quit! If you smoke, share your struggles to quit with your children.
• Maintain a smoke-free home and car.

Talk With Kids

• Give clear, consistent messages about the dangers of tobacco.
• Emphasize the immediate, health effects of smoking or using tobacco.
• Emphasize the effects of smoking on physical appearance.
• Tell your kids that you don't want them to smoke and will be disappointed with them, if they do.
• Help children critically analyze messages that glamorize tobacco use on television, in movies and in magazines.
• Destroy the myth that everybody smokes.
• Share tobacco-use prevention information with children and talk with them about anything and everything.
• Teach children to manage emotions.
• Teach children to be social without tobacco.

Talk With Teachers

• Work with the school board to provide youth tobacco cessation programs, rather than punishment, for students who violate tobacco-use policies.

Other Helpful Links

• The Toll of Tobacco in Michigan - Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (tobaccofreekids.org)
• The Toll of Tobacco in the United States - Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (tobaccofreekids.org)

Sources: Tobacco-Free Kids, 2009, Schwebel, R., How to Help Your Kids Choose To Be Tobacco-Free, 1999, Distefan, J.M., Gilpin, E.A., Choi, W.S. & Pierce, J.P., 1998.