If you sometimes feel like you don’t know how to guide your teen through the various minefields they face, then you are not alone. Am I being too strict? Will they rebel against too-tight boundaries? Or am I too lenient, and will they take advantage of opportunities to stray? In the area of teen smoking, a Chicago Tribune article offers advice based on a new study showing that “parents who set limits are less likely to have kids who smoke, regardless of their ethnic and racial backgrounds.” Apparently, a style of parenting “associated with rule enforcement, curfews and set bedtimes, was more likely to go hand in hand with so-called anti-tobacco parenting strategies.” The article reported that this type of parenting was linked to a lower chance the teen would initiate smoking at all. Specifically, the anti-tobacco strategies included things such as:
- Punishing a child if he or she has been caught smoking
- Discussing with the child the motivations behind smoking
- Talking about the dangers of smoking