How to tell if your child smokes?

I must thank all of you for very good response to all my blogs on smoking. So now from feedback I got I found that many readers had many queries and one of the major worries of the parents was how do we know that our child is smoking or not? So I researched a big and talked to my uncle who recently gave up smoking and since he has been smoking since he was 16, so he told me how can parents easily know if their 16 years old child is smoking or not. Here is his version.

This is my 5^th article on smoking. Previous articles were

1. http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-quit-smoking-for-ever
2. http://hubpages.com/hub/Did-my-uncle-really-benefitted-from-quitting-smoking
3. http://hubpages.com/hub/How-Vitamin-C-help-control-negative-effect-of-smoking-tobacco
4. http://hubpages.com/hub/Smokers-Delight-mouth-plight

With the advent of modernizations cities grew bigger and with cities growing bigger many ills came in to the society. As cities grew bigger and bigger the man became less and less social. Now in big cities like New Delhi or Mumbai in India or New York or Los Angeles in USA or London, Paris , Bonn in Europe and many other cities in world the situation is such that people do not even know who is their neighbor or who lives in adjacent flat ( apartment). Now this has its own disadvantage. This has resulted in loss of one very important person and that is Gossip Aunt. She would keep everyone informed what someone is up to. If today Mr. Wilson and Mrs. Wilson has a fight or if Mr. Sharma is having an extra marital affair nothing is hidden and she would gossip around whole neighborhood about it. Now she can be a real pain in the neck but she had advantages too. She kept everyone in check since people knew that the news would reach to those person whom they want to hide most. Now she is gone so usually the teen age children can now go scot free without parents knowing as both parents are working so they do not have whole day to watch the kids and children can easily pick up bad habits like smoking

First of all the most important thing is how child can be hooked to smoking tobacco or even worse weeds. There are several reasons

1. Smoker parents: If parents smoke then chances of children picking up smoking increase many folds as children tend to copy parents.
2. Company:   Keep a close watch on the company of your child. If he has friends who smoke then chances of him picking up smoking increase a lot. In countries like India the parents can force child not to play or keep company with such friends.
3. Advertisements:  Ever seen those ads where a guy does some wonderful bravery act and then smoke a cigarette and say Hum Red & white Peene walo ki baat hi kuch hai. ( We Red & White Cigarette smokers are so cool). I am sure these kind of advertisements are in every country. Thank God many govt. has banned tobacco ads in many countries including India. But still these ads find a way to come to your home in some foreign magazine or Tv channel.
4. Favorite Hero smokes :   There are still many heroes who smoke publicly who child see as a role model . In India Shah Rukh Khan a very popular hero is a role model of many in youth. Unfortunately he smokes and smokes publically too. This lets child pick up smoking

The biggest problem is how to know that your child is smoking tobacco.  There are quite a few signs which would tell you if your child is smoking.

1. Smell:  Try to smell his/her clothes. If your child smokes then sooner or later his/her clothes will smell of cigarette smoking.
2. Pockets:   Do check the pockets of his pants and if he has been smoking then there might be some match sticks in his pockets or even little bit of tobacco which might have fallen from the cigarette from his pocket. Small shavings of tobacco.
3. Money: Since cigarettes are not cheap anywhere in the world, and your little darling may not have enough money so keep a tab on your wallet or purse and see if any money is missing ever.
4. Smoker’s symptoms: If your child is smoking regularly then he would have following symptoms

1.       Cough

2.       Bad breath

3.       Staining of teeth

4.       Would tire much more earlier than before

5.       Decreased performance in sports.

No one of us wants that the little teenager should be victim of smoking tobacco. Tobacco has killed more people than all the wars put together.  It is always better to keep an eye on your child less he falls to this killer habit.  Remember every day about 4000 teenagers pick up this habit. Do you think your child would be its next victim?