Smoking Teenagers

 You know, I actually think the smart phones are the worst things for teenagers. I have written several posts on how they are terrible.  

But, what should be in the second place of terrible things for teenagers is all smoking and all types of cigarettes.  

Why after over 60 years of all the evidence of harm cigarette smoking causes do teenagers STILL want to try and start to smoke?  With all the details of the problems that will occur, I could ask why anyone would still smoke.  

1964 first Surgeon generals report on the dangers of smoking

I should say of course that I am not a doctor and I am not a psychologist so all opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not come by scientific method. However, many of my opinions are based on long standing scientific information and I am a good reader and you too can read and find out about from the scientific sources which have been scientifically tested. 

To look at it with no emotions, I would say there are a couple things which still push teenagers to smoke

1. The most important is probably peer pressure and social dynamics among teenagers.  In other words their immediate school and friend and non friend environment.  Teenagers are greatly influenced by their social environment.

2. Again because teenagers' (see my two sides of the coin post here) brains are developing and it causes them to make often bad decisions. Yet decisions which they want to make to push or test the waters of "allowability".  In other words they want to do things which werent allowable as kids but now they feel they are older and want to try them.  Bad or good.  The more taboo it was, the better.

3. Parents smoke so the kids see that and figure its ok for them to smoke. Now they are teenagers and nearly adults they should do adult things, or things they perceive as adult --- good or bad or whether it is good or bad for them doesnt matter.  

So now I have to connect this with my life. This is my journal.  But I have to think back to my youth and remember that my brother started smoking when he was 14ish and it was a great great disappointment to my parents whom neither smoked.  I think at the time it was not prohibited for parents to hit their kids and my father may have struck my brother for smoking or at the very least yelled hard at him.  My brother was much more difficult than my daughter, and my father probably had to be very strict and tough with him.  Still I wonder if a good discussion sitting down and talking about it wouldnt have been better.  My brother moved out soon after he was 16. I dont think my fathers' yelling worked. 

So here is my older teenage daughter who started to smoke.  I am very very disappointed.  And obviously my third point above that teenagers see their parents smoking doesnt apply. Neither my wife nor I smoke. My wife DID smoke when she was a late teenager, so actually, my daughter refers to that, which is the same thing as point three above.  So ... there it is. 

Still I couldnt hit her, I didnt even really yell at her.  I simply told her my feelings that I think it is a very very bad thing especially for her body at this time.  It does terrible things to the body especially now in her growing time and her brain too. And that I was very very disappointed with her smoking.  I did tell her that she was not allowed to smoke in the house.  On occasion or once a week I tell her that if she is still smoking I am very very sorry that she is and that she should know how bad it is for her.  Whether or not that impresses her or on the contrary eggs her on to keep smoking is a question.  Again, point 2 above.  Bad doesnt matter.  Trying "taboo" things is good.  And if they are recognized as things adults do, even better.  

I AM disappointed that she is smoking.  But I think that it shows that number

one, her environment, is stronger than parental guidance, or can be. Maybe her mother can dissuade her better than I can.  I am not sure hitting as perhaps my father did (though he probably wouldnt have hit a daughter) or even yelling is the answer.  Though I can not quite say that serious discussion works either.  

To tell you the truth I am kind of at a loss and just have resigned to riding it out and keep telling her that it is bad and I am disappointed. But again, maybe her mother can persuade her and she will stop at her stronger bidding.  

I really cant say how I would have reacted if I had had a son. Probably just the same.  

If you are a parent who smokes and see your kids starting to smoke you should really educate yourself on how really bad smoking is for teenagers growth.  Just when they need their body in really good working order while it is making a huge growth spurt in the brain and the body, smoking causes probably irrepairable damage in the body and brain.  For instance, while I dont have a link here and should, smoking can stunt your growth, for boys moreso, and you wont reach your full height.  Smoking stunts all and damages all your body's growth. As a result you wont reach as good an endpoint if you hadnt smoked. In other words you as a person in body and knowledge wont reach the same heights that was meant for you. You stunted them by smoking.  Might I add that if you can persuade your kids to hold off as long as possible until they are past their teenage years, it wont be "as bad" to smoke.  But the younger they start the worse off they will be.  

This I believe quite strongly. That smoking of all sorts is a huge damage to teenagers, to all people and society, but even more to teenagers.  

And yet I cannot sit by my teenager 24 hours a day and make sure she doesnt smoke. Nor can I hit her, "knock some sense into her" so to speak as maybe my father thought he was doing to my brother.  I am at a loss for something which will definitely make her stop smoking.  My only tactic is discussion, education and strong persuasion, and the hope that maybe my wife can do better.  None of which I am confident will work. 

When I wrote this post idea down in my book of ideas, I thought it would have some conclusion and I thought it would have another direction.  But now in writing I have gone in another direction and have come to no conclusion.   All I can say is maybe you know something that can work better or that like life it is a work in progress.  Some of it is bad and some is quite good.  I guess that is parenting overall.  

I hope the new year is still new and fresh for you.  Try to keep it fresh and not slide into a winter blues depression. It is quite cold out in many many places and other world issues are not being resolved. If you made new years resolutions push yourself not to drop them yet nor get frustrated with them.  Give yourself a kick to keep yourself going forward.  Dont lie down for a winter hibernation.  It is tempting when the weather is so cold. But do make sure you get enough sleep to fight all the winter sicknesses out there.  Best to you all. 

2 Goals for my post in 2024

 As a follower of Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm,  I know it is WAY past the date that I can wish anybody a happy new year.   All I want to do is acknowledge, and I think that is allowable, that it is a new year and I have a couple wishes for my blog for the new year.  I Dont call them Resolutions, but rather some goals I hope to achieve here in 2024. 

First, I want to continue my steadily increasing number of posts to get it to 24 for the year 2024 and have the second or third best year for number of posts since the early years.  If you can see how many posts I have every year, I had the most in my first full year of posting. It was still a lot for a couple years after that, but always a couple fewer. Until it went way down in the later teens down to the worst 3 for the year.  Geez what was wrong with me? 

One of the "good things" about covid was I got to writing again.  I got to writing more posts and since covid my posts per year has steadily gone up.  In 2023 I nearly got it to 2 a month to make it 24 for the year.  But I missed it.  For 2024 I want to hit that 24. 

You may think that is rather shallow, to write to reach a goal, but it is more like keeping myself going on the task.  My task has always been to document me taking care, or not taking care of, my daughters  as they grow up.  I have always thought that I did more than ordinary fathers and spent more time with them, but sometimes I did/do not. This might be one of those times as I am working in my store 5 or 6 days a week.  Still I want to document that.  It is like a public journal.  

In that sense also, as I have said at least 5 times, and recently, but want to say it again, my writing is not really to entertain. In fact many times my writing will be boring and uninteresting to you or any reader, but that is ok by me.  Because a journal is often boring and only interesting to the writer.  If you want to read, great. Again, it is a public journal.  I am not looking for numbers. I am aiming on documentation. 

In that respect I think it is better to keep the task going and write more to document more.   Twice a month is very reasonable.   So, my first goal and probably a goal to keep me going is to get 24 for the year, hopefully at least 2 a month. 

2.  To add 5 more meals to my repertoire of suppers I can cook that my daughters will eat. This is more difficult than it sounds as my younger daughter is a very finicky eater at this time in her life. I have every hope that she will be better when she gets older because as my older sister reminded me, she too had been a very picky eater when she was young but is eating now as an adult well enough.  Although she is nearly a vegetarian, she still eats meat and eats all the meals placed in front of her. So, I think my younger daughter will expand her tastes also. Just unfortunately for me, at this time, they are very limited.  

I dont know if limited is the right word.  Its not that she only sticks to a couple meals, its just that she doesnt like to eat a lot of things.  Lets see, green vegetables, carrots, mashed potatoes, but not cooked or baked potatoes or french fries.  Curried food.  She likes some Thai spice foods but not others.  She doesnt like any type of beans.  This makes it difficult for Mexican foods.  Although my wife has made a beanless chili con carne for her.  She doesnt like chick peas which I have recently discovered not to mention no cauliflower.  

My other daughter used to like my chicken wings, but not any more.  Neither of

them want to eat pork meat dishes.  That knocked my barbeque pork out of my repertoire.  My older daughter objects to me making any Thai or curry dishes because it is "not in my heritage".   

Both of them eat some but not other fruits.  One daughter eats bananas, the other not.  One watermelon the other no.  Like that. And to cap it off, one doesnt like dark chocolate, the other doesnt like white chocolate.  Go figger.  They will both claim that if they eat the chocolate they dont like they will throw up.   

So.  You want to talk about a daunting task.  

That said, I think there are some openings for meals.  Hey, give me a break if they arent the most exquisite of meals, but... give me some leeway.  

Sloppy Joes.  I have always wanted to do this meal.  I never really ate them when I was a kid although they were in my periphery vision.  They were always around. I am very good with the sauce for this meal, so I think it will be a simple thing to transfer my spaghetti sauce to a sloppy joe.  

Yes, some form of chili. I dont like to copy my wife, but in this case I have always wanted to make my own chili. My mother always made it and it was very good and she had no heritage for chili, and I really like chili so I would like to make it for the whole family.  

I have in fact added a couple of Thai dishes to my  own repertoire, like this one pictured, red curry chicken, but they were rejected by both my daughters.  agh.   I got these dishes from a cookbook written by an Austrian sportsman cook, so I dont agree that it has to be in my heritage for me to try.  Therefore I think there must be something I can make to my liking that has thai spices such as curry or ginger and noodles and can be liked by my daughters. But havent discovered it yet.  

There are a couple recipes sent to me by my sister she discovered in my mothers apartment in her recipe lists.  I remember the dishes and would like to re create them. I dont think all of them will be accepted by my daughters, especially the stuffed cabbage, but those will be more a pride thing to cook what my parents cooked and what I remember from my childhood and may or may not have liked.  I cant remember if I was thrilled with my moms stuffed cabbage, although by the time I was an adult I know I did like it.  

If I am lucky I ll get four new dishes from the above choices.  If not lucky... two.  

We ll see.   At any rate, I am up for the challenge.  If they dont like something but it is still good or made well, then it is still somewhat of a victory as a new meal for me to eat and a feather in my cap of cooking.  

I think these are reasonable and doable goals to have.  Sometimes the point is to not put the bar up so high so in fact it is easy to jump over it.  I am not one for making impossible goals, but rather possible goals.   

Over and out for 2024.   Please join me and read my blog when you can.   

Thank you

There is a new wave of deep house on the circuit.  On of my favorite labels for the new deep house who I think do a very good job of it is Bondage records. An awful name, but great music.  Of the bondage stuff I am deciding that one of the best artists on the roster is Marcus Homm.   

My younger daughter came to me with her list of music for studying and doing homework by and well, it was like McDonalds music. Tasty but without nutrients and not so great for the body.  The Bondage label and Marcus Homm is not empty easy listening calories.  There are so many good nutrients in this music.  So even if you just want passive background light listening OR you want to be an active listener, both are possible with Bondage and Marcus Homm s album "After Dark"