Smoking Parents: Do you love your children enough to quit?

United States
January 30, 2007 4:01am CST
I'm asking this question because of my own experience as the child of a smoker. I think most of you do not realize the choices you are making or the things you could be setting into motion by your habits. Do you love your children enough to stop for them? Really, do you? Could you throw away all your cigarette's right now and never look back because your children are THAT important to you? My mom was a smoker. She smoked almost my whole childhood. I use to hide them from her but she would get mad and I'd have to give them back. Of course, she didn't want me to be a smoker. I loved my mom more than anything but she was a hypocrite in this area. She smoked and expected me not to follow in her footsteps. She'd say, "It's bad for you". Well yeah, it is.. but it's almost bad for YOU, Mom. Didn't it cross her mind (and doesn't it cross yours) that your children want nothing more than for YOU to be alive and a part of their lives for as long as possible? They want to know they matter more than those cigarettes. You might think the are too little to know and you could be right - but they won't be little forever. My mom got sick with cancer when I was 13. She had surgery and we all thought she was cured. She quit smoking on the spot but it was too late. She waited too long to make that decision. 3 years later she had bone cancer and 9 months later she was dead. I was only 17 and I lost the person who mattered the most to me. The person I still needed so badly in my life. After the sadness and anger went away, all I could think was that I wish I had mattered enough to her to quit when I was born before it was too late. I'm a mom myself now and I've missed out on so much with my mom. My son will never know her. I had to go through all of the womanhood stuff alone that I should have had a mom for just like everyone else. I still needed her, I still do now. I think parents need to be less selfish when they decide to have children. I think they need to realize they are bringing a new person into the world - a person who deserves to have a healthy set of parents who love their child enough to quit. No child should have to see what I saw, no child should have to witness their mom dying from cancer all because of a choice to smoke. So I ask you, do your children matter to you?
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