Questions for anyone with kids...

[Simon Bolivar]

My daughter grew up with me smoking cigars. I never hid it & in case you never guessed, they are a regular part of my conversation at home as well as elsewhere. Usually I am smoking outside with our friends so she sees it but isn't affected health wise, nor ever shown an interest in it. So far she has manged to saw to to smoking, gamboling & boys (shes nearly 22yo), glad to say at least we can share a drink together. If when she's 30yo or so & wants to try one (very unlikely I would say) then I wouldn't let her have one of mine, but if she got to the stage of already smoking occasionally then I'd love to share one with her. But we have always voiced our concerns about cigs & I read once that more kids smoke who's parents don't smoke but don't give an opinion than those that do.

Once she was around 15-16yo I got her to water my cigars for pocket money as she couldn't get another job & I wasn't giving her money for doing nothing. I must admit she didn't do a bad job & never over watered. Now she lives away from home I miss her service if I am away myself for longer than usual as my wife won't touch them.

My mother used to smoke 20-40 a day around use all the time, in bed, kitchen, at meals & in the car but she wasn't the only one in those days it would have been fairly normal behavoir. It put me & my sister off as she always stank of fags & I could hardly believe it when after yrs of trying she finally gave up in her late 50's.

My brother-in-law will smoke a cigar with me if his 14yo son isn't about but won't smoke in front of him. I think it's silly, if he was interested in smoking he'd be doing it already, luckily he's sports mad & not interested in the leaf. I am waiting to see how he copes with alcohol though!

As a last thought although we don't want our own kids to start smoking cigs & rightly discourage them, we shouldn't be too concerned about everyone elses. It's the cutting back on smoking that is reducing the pension pot as a larger percentage of the population now live longer, due to their quitting/not starting. They say our kids generation 25% could live to be 100yo. They'll still be half blind, deaf & incontinent but it does leave the one growth area for jobs to expand; untrained help in Nursing homes. Rant over.

[mattyhall22]

Im not sharing any of my cigars with my kids!


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[Undercover]

Sorry for the late addition to this thread – not had much time at the laptop and I struggle with Tapatalk – but it interests me because of a similar debate we’ve had at home as a result of an experience we had last year, both of which predate my recent decision to take up cigars.

In summer last year, just after our daughter turned 3, we had a shocking reminder of how young children respond to what they see. We were in a pub garden in the New Forest (down there to visit Peppa Pig World!) and she was running around as all 3 year olds do. We were then horrified to see her go to an ash tray on another table, pick up a cigarette butt and pretend to smoke it. More recently, she ‘smoked’ a pen – much like the toddler on that public health commercial.

My wife has never smoked and I didn’t then (and wouldn’t touch cigarettes anyway). However, my in-laws do smoke and our daughter stays with them one night a week. They say they try not to smoke in front of her, but clearly even that limited exposure to the behaviour was enough for her to mimic it. Of course, she’s not about to start smoking at 3 (now 4), but it seems to me she has been learning a behaviour, while lacking the capacity to comprehend it. We've explained that smoking is very bad and makes people poorly, but she's not going to take on board anything more nuanced than that.

I don’t think I’ve contradicted anything anyone else has said here, but our experience has clearly influenced the way I think. I suppose what I’m saying is that, even though I really don’t want to lie to my daughter, the truth has to wait until she is a lot older. I worry that if she knows I smoke, even if she never actually saw me, then this would sow the seed of legitimacy. I need to be confident that she can listen to explanation, understand my behaviour, reason things out and make her own decisions, and we’re years away from that. Conversely, I worry that hiding something which she then finds out 'by accident' will undermine her trust in me and what I tell her. Of course, children don't come with an instruction book and there are no 'right' answers - I guess we just want to avoid the blatantly wrong ones.

(Actually, why am I worrying about lying to my daughter? She thinks a man with a white beard and red suit pops down the chimney in late December to leave presents at the end of her bed!)

[MrMaduro]

Great thread! This is something I've been thinking about a bit recently as my Mrs is coming up to 15 weeks preggers with our first, so it's something I'm going to have to face soon enough! I'm lucky at the moment as I have the conservatory as my 'man lair' (I will post some pics up soon as it may have to be dispersed once little one arrives!) where I can open the doors along with a few windows and stick the ceiling fan on. It's as good as outside then but with a nice chair, my vinyl collection and a roof! I am secretly hoping that we have enough room for the little one that I can keep my conservatory / man cave as it is as I can completely shut it off from the house and continue to enjoy my cigars out there when I get the chance! It's hard to say how I will approach the subject with my little one when they are old enough to question it, but I figure I'm ok for a couple of years at least!

[groundhog]

I've thought about this a lot now...
I'm definitely not smoking around the kids or wife - ever. The kids until they're in their teens, the wife another 23 weeks (well, probably longer tbh!).
My daughter knows I have 'sticks', which I collect, catalogue, trade and bomb with. She quite likes the idea of colllecting/trading/bombing as they're concepts she understands.
So I'm going to stick with that for a while and see how I get on!

[Simon Bolivar]

I'd just chill a little guys Most of us at 50+ grew up with either one or two smokers in our home, that smoked openly all time. We 'smoked' toy candy cigarettes & puffed on biros ect. Some kids will try it in the early teens who's parent snever smoked & some of those how parents did smoked will just be revolted by it.
Avoid smoking around them when young but don't be tempted to deny anything when they are old enough to ask a direct question as the truth will always out in the end.