In 2017, approximately 2.1 million middle and high school students were reported to be E-cigarette users. This figure has significantly increased and can be a worrying factor to you as a parent. E-cigarettes have been in existence for quite a long time, but their use has risen drastically to almost tenfold.
What Is Vaping?
Vaping is a modern form of consuming nicotine through the use of specific devices. Activity is prevalent among teenagers, and there’s a possibility your teenager might have engaged in it without your knowledge.
It involves the act of inhaling and exhaling the vapour produced by heated nicotine liquid. The liquid, together with the vaping devices, can easily be bought from local stores. You can click here for more information on this.
Vaping originated as a way of aiding tobacco smokers to stop the habit of smoking. Unfortunately, it has turned into a trend that your teenager might be engaging in.
Like smoking tobacco, vaping is known to have risks that can injure your son or daughter’s health.
Below are some of the risks your child might be exposed to during vaping:
- E-cigarettes are known to contain twice as much nicotine as compared to one cigarette stick. Your teenager might end up being exposed to more nicotine.
- Due to the high levels of nicotine, your teen shall be highly susceptible to addiction. Vaping results in an increased level of attention and being alert; however, with time and with reduced use, it ends up affecting your child’s ability to pay attention.
- According to research, vaping has been likened to have the same effects on the lung, similar to what is observed in smokers.
- Vaping can also result in a spike in your child’s heart rate and blood pressure, therefore impacting his/her cardiovascular system and even triggering allergies.
- Vaping has also contributed to deaths; however, it is still unclear what the root cause is. More studies are being conducted; however, CDC has advised against its use until investigations are concluded.
Why You Should Be Concerned
Based on the risks detailed above, you should be concerned if your child has picked up the habit of vaping.
More often than not, your child will not engage in this habit in your presence; therefore, you should be on the lookout for peculiar behaviour.
The vaping devices have an attractive design while most resemble pens; therefore, you might miss it unless you are extra keen.
More so, vaping does not produce any odour making it hard for you as a parent to make any traces.
How To Talk to Your Child About Vaping
Your child might be having the misconception that vaping is less harmful to health compared to cigarette smoking. Most teenagers, during a survey, mentioned that vaping is preferable as they know it doesn’t cause the same effect as inhaling tobacco.
Share the facts with your teen. Create a comfortable ambience where your child will not feel pressured into being open. Start by asking him or her whether the activity is popular at school.
Your child will quickly open up, and they might end up confessing on the number of times they tried it.
How to React
Discovering your child vapes can be shocking and hurtful, but how you react and the consequent actions will influence your child’s behaviour. Stay calm as you gather as much information as you can. When you let your child know about the dangers, your concerns and reassure them of your love despite the letdown, they might open up more. It helps to know how many times they vape when they started, and who they do it with.
How Do You Convince Your Child to Stop Vaping?
Many adolescents look more to their peers for direction and acceptance, sometimes to the extent of adopting bad habits. Talk to your child about having meaningful friendships that include you, the parent. You may have to talk them into going for counselling and testing to rule out addiction.
If you don’t know how to handle the discovery, talk to an addiction expert, more so, one experienced in youth addiction. You don’t want to drive the teen away but bring him closer and at the same time help him make better decisions in the future.
Despite various claims that vaping is safer than smoking, it may end up drastically affecting your child’s health. Talk to your child today or seek further advice from a medical practitioner on the health effects of vaping.
In conclusion, prevention is better than cure. When you talk to your teens about drugs, addiction and the effects of peer pressure, they are more likely to make smarter decisions when facing temptations.
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