My Mom smoked Pall Mall non filtered cigarettes. She did for years and years. My mom started smoking when she was 16. Everyone smoked back when my Mom turned 16. She will be 84 in December 2007. Anyway, she had her kids a little later in life. She began having her children at age 34 had three girls and finally at the age of 43 delivered her last child her only son. We kids are all three years apart. I am number three in the scheme of things.

Any way as we kids were growing up, she would sit at the kitchen table and smoke and as she did she would say to us kids, "You kids should never smoke, don't you kids ever start smoking, this is a nasty habit...". She would do this over and over to try to teach her girls and boy not to smoke.

When my oldest sister was about 9 years old, she grabbed my mom's cigarettes off the counter and took them into the garage to give it a try. My mom has a super nose by the way, she can smell anything from quite a distance. So shortly after my sister lit the cigarette, my mom caught her out in the garage smoking. She made her smoke the entire pack of cigarettes...My oldest sister does not smoke to this day.

About three years later, my older sister decided that she would try out Mom's cigarettes and again my Mom's super nose detected the smell and she was caught. My mom made her smoke about three cigarettes and she got sick and was throwing up. She does not smoke to this day.

Now it was my turn, so, when I was about nine years old, I took my Mom's Pall Malls to the garage to smoke them with my friends. Of course my mom turned up. She took our cigarettes away, sent my friends home with the promise that she was going to call their moms, then she went inside the house and threw her cigarettes into the garbage. She has never smoked again and this was in 1973.

I guess a natural solution to help a parent quit smoking is the love of their children. Knowing that it is something that will harm their children's health, knowing that second hand smoke is a killer, just knowing that one day their children may pick up their cigarettes and get hooked on them, perhaps that is the best natural solution to help get someone to stop smoking. Thinking of someone other than ones self...the children.

A short post script to this story: My mom's dear friend did not quit smoking when my mom did. She now must wear oxygen at all times.

Learn more about this author, Renee Dawson.
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