Timothy Phillips
Member
27 messages
joined Oct 2021
We have a similar story here; reading your posts feels like looking in a mirror. Both my husband and I smoke, and I remember vividly how much our daughter criticized us during her early teen years, claiming we were both terrible and suffocating her. Of course, we never smoked indoors—she wasn't actually at risk from us—but she nagged us constantly for her own reasons. It’s not that the criticism from non-smokers isn't valid; I agree with them and understand why they find it bothersome. But once a teenager stops complaining about it incessantly, you start paying attention.
Then, the nagging suddenly stopped. All of a sudden, it wasn't a problem anymore that we were "poisoning ourselves and everyone around us." During that phase, you don't doubt anything—it's just puberty—and her grades were perfect, so everything seemed fine. The thing is, my husband and I smoke the same brands, and there's always an extra pack or two lying around the house; we don't hide them in drawers because we feel we have nothing to conceal from anyone. Sometime during summer break before she started high school, something felt off. I began sniffing around her room because her things occasionally smelled like smoke. Just like Cornucopia, I tried to convince myself it wasn't true, because it felt impossible—my child and cigarettes?!
The situation was crystal clear: she lives with two smokers and has easy access to our supplies.
When I first mentioned my suspicions to my husband, he dismissed it entirely, saying there was no way she would do such a thing. I stayed persistent. I told him I wouldn't confront her directly, but I would monitor our cigarette stash to see if the count was right, because if she was smoking, she was stealing from us.
After a while, the numbers matched perfectly. I thought to myself that I would be making a false accusation against my own child, who was the biggest non-smoker the world had ever seen—at least on the surface.
I let go of the paranoia, and days passed. About a month later, I almost convinced myself I was wrong. One August weekend, I decided to wash the windows. As I wiped down the metal windowsill on the outside of my daughter's window, the rag came away black and smelled like an ashtray. I went full Sherlock Holmes and investigated. I looked under the window and found a pile of the exact same cigarette butts in the grass, clearly left there over days or weeks. I called my husband over and told him what I found—that our little girl had been smoking for quite some time, or that we had a ghost living in her room smoking by the window and tossing butts onto the lawn.
Besides, there are plenty of times when she is home alone, giving her all the time in the world to make poor choices. My husband still wants to hope she was just experimenting and has moved on, but I am 100% convinced she is a smoker based on everything I saw.
That same afternoon, while we were all together, I approached her very directly: "So, please tell me, how long have you been smoking?"
She stayed silent for a few seconds, stammered, and finally muttered through her teeth, "I don't remember exactly! Why are you asking me this?" I told her it was important that she be honest with me and that I wanted to know everything. I told her she needed to stop while she still can, noting that I have tried to quit many times myself. Since she had spent the previous year lecturing me about the dangers of tobacco, there was no point in me preaching to her now.
It turned out she had been doing this for several months, just as I suspected. In the beginning, she was just taking our cigarettes, and she claimed she tried it out of boredom, but eventually liked it and used it to supposedly "manage the stress" of high school applications. I don't recall any stress; everything seemed to go smoothly from my perspective. Eventually, she just kept going because she enjoyed it and had the opportunity, and by then she was buying her own cigarettes and had likely formed a real habit.
I asked her if anyone else in her friend group smokes, and she said no one in her immediate circle does, and since their parents don't smoke, the kids don't either. She subtly threw the blame back at us, implying that since she learned it from us, it's a reflection of our parenting.
I’m trying to stay objective here. Since she starts high school in a few days, I know that imposing bans is useless—they wouldn't stick anyway. Instead, I try to gently discourage her, which she understands. Deep down, she actually wants to break free from the addiction, but it’s complicated. Just telling you my story. She did brag once about going three days without a cigarette, but I saw her slip up again almost immediately.
Cornucopia, I don't know how you manage it, but I can't stand the idea of her smoking right in front of us. Maybe it’s hypocritical, since I know she smokes at home when my husband and I aren't around, but she shouldn't do it in our presence. If I were the type of person who only believed what I saw with my own eyes, I’d just treat her like a non-smoker. I haven't actually caught her with a cigarette 🙂
