Teens and Smoking Tobacco

The differences between subjective feelings of those who smoke and those who don’t are shown in behavioral changes that are more apparent in teens than adults. Teens seem to be more abrasive when smoking or they feel like they are older and wiser when they smoke. Why do they smoke when we have seen billions of dollars spent on antismoking campaigns? The American Lung Association estimates that every minute four thousand eight hundred teens will take their first drag off a cigarette. Of those four thousand eight hundred, about two thousand will go on to be chain smokers. The fact that teen smoking rates are steadily increasing is disturbing. We are finding out that about 80% of adult smokers started smoking as teenagers.

Teens like to act as if they are someone special or dangerous. By smoking they can act on those feelings. Because it is so forbidden it becomes more alluring to teens. The problem is that when they take that first puff, they can become addicted. The idea that they are breaking the law or going against their parents and schools is an addiction within itself. Kids like to get attention; it does not matter if it’s good attention or bad attention. They crave attention and by smoking they get big attention. The other teens look at them in all kinds of ways and the adults get upset and don’t know what to do.

The times are changing; what the public and science did not know twenty years ago is now coming to the surface. The fact is that smoking cigarettes can cause many health problems including emphysema, high blood pressure, and various forms of cancer. We are seeing people live longer and healthier lives and the old idea that smoking makes you cool and attractive is gone. This is the truth about cigarettes; they are loaded with harmful chemicals and the end result is that they are a dangerous drug that can seriously harm people.

DOES PHYSICAL PUNISHMENT HELP IN EDUCATION?

Today everyone talks about education: what should or shouldn’t parent have to do? What’s right or wrong? What can their actions cause in the future: the traumas or the happiness of their own kids? That’s why, today we see a considerable number of lost parent who try to think but at the end just act impulsively, sometimes hitting their kids and hurting them deeply, without any change in the behavior of their children. That’s why, I think that physical punishment doesn’t help in education and shouldn’t be used.

There are a lot of fields that have made fantastic advances in education and have helped to improve the way the people teach. The aggressiveness is something of our ancestors, so today, the way of managing the things is different and when people hit and fight they are returning and ignoring the mind evolution, just acting for their instincts like animals. In the past, the hits could work and sometimes there were specific dangerous situations where they can be necessary, but no more, a kid is not a real threat that can put in danger the lives of their parents. And if it is the case, that child needs special attention, not hits

We have to be aware that the parents have the obligation to educate and act like a model. When they hit their kids, they lose the control and they behave like their sons and daughters, it means like kids. So it seems that there’s no difference between adults and children. The parents send an implicit message: “I don’t know how to act and manage the situation, that’s why I use physical punishment and take advantage of my power position”

In spite of all, the most important things are that children don’t learn and there exist better methods. Studies show that punishment, specially, positive punishment, doesn’t educate, just produces that the kid doesn’t do the thing when someone is looking, so that means that he/she is not abstracting any lesson or moral. When parents talk with their kids, make agreements with them, reinforce good behaves, etc, they get better results and help their children to have critical thinking.

Finally, it is important to be aware of the idea that physical punishment doesn’t educate that at the end is the most important mission of a father or a mother. They have to act like the adults of the relationship, giving their kids the best environment to grow up, where they can think and be responsible for their acts and behaviors because they are conscious of, not just because they want to avoid a slap.