6 Steps to Make Your Teen Quit Vaping
In my perfect world I would successfully prevent my kid from ever vaping (and all other dangerous, illegal, and stupid things available to her) in the first place.
If you’re like me, you can tend to trick yourself into believing that you possess the power to make your kid do healthy things – and not do unhealthy things. My optimistic parental thinking is what leads me to click on articles with promising titles like this one. Parenting would be sooooo awesome if we could simply implement six steps to take control and ideally avoid or at least resolve “the problem.”
Truth is, we cannot make our kids quit vaping. Why? Because we are just not that powerful.
How then, do we have efficacy as parents when it comes to the harmful epidemic of youth vaping? Our parental power exists in our knowledge, rules, expectations, consequences and our clear communication about these to our children. Our values-driven mindsets and behaviors are ours to create and control. Thoughtful command of these important parental domains provides us with magical powers of influence over our kids. How our child navigates their decision-making around our sphere of influence is where they exercise their own power.
Parental power lies in your willingness and ability to influence, not control, your child’s choice about vaping.
I cannot promise you that this article will prevent your child from trying e-cigarettes or correct your teen’s vaping habit. What I can reassure you of is this: The following six steps will help you intentionally attune to your thoughts, feelings, and action plan so you can then apply your personalized parental power to influence your child’s choices about vaping. Their health and well-being is worth your mindful intent to influence them away from vaping.
STEP 1: EDUCATE YOURSELF
By now, you have likely seen articles and videos about the danger that e-cigarettes pose to the lungs and developing brains of adolescents. The infancy of this epidemic means nobody knows the exact long-term impacts of this habit. Consider, for a moment, that teens are more likely to purchase cheap e-juice brands whose manufacturers keep production costs low by avoiding product research and development within FDA registered labs. The result is that your kid likely inhales a product that contains not only nicotine but also a host of other harmful chemicals (acetoin, diacetyl, etc.) than the more expensive brands. Propylene glycol, an FDA approved and regulated substance contained in e-juice, is an ingredient that can trigger mouth ulcers and/or skin rashes in some vapers. Online forums exist where vapers rely on peer-to-peer support for their physical sensitivities and allergic reactions to e-juice.
It’s imperative for parents to know what e-cigs, dab pens, and e-juice look like. Most articles about teen vaping reference the company Juul and their same-named vaping device that looks just like a mini flash drive. Meanwhile, other competitors have quickly flooded the e-cigarette market with devices that look nothing like a Juul and have yet to receive widely publicized press. A parent’s ability to identify a vape pen or pod in a backpack or dresser drawer is limited simply because mom and dad don’t know that such devices exist; they’re easily mistaken as benign by the nature of their designs.
Set aside an hour and search the internet to browse images of Mi2, Neo, Suorin, Juul, Phix, and Orion. These are popular vape devices used by teens. Do the same for e-juice and nicotine salts so you can familiarize yourself with the brand names and packaging. Aqua is a popular brand of nicotine salts. Teens have gravitated towards nicotine salts because of its higher nicotine content and more intense buzz. Finally, visit the informative website flavorshookkids.org, an educational site addressing the epidemic of increased tobacco usage among our Generation Z.
Parental knowledge and concern about vaping may be the speed bump teens need to slow this harmful trend.
STEP 2: HAVE A HEART-TO-HEART TALK
Use your increased knowledge to initiate conversations with your teen focused on letting them know you’re not naive about vaping. Ideally, your conversation’s intro will lead you to learn more about their perspective on vaping. A simple but effective lead-in is: “I read an article today about vaping and I learned that …” followed by a curious question such as, “Is this what you’re seeing too?” or “What are your thoughts about that?” Even if your child replies, “I don’t know,” your act of soliciting a conversation on the subject lets them know your finger is on the pulse of this epidemic. Embody a non-judgmental and curious attitude to influence the caring quality of the discussion.
STEP 3: USE YOUR SENSES TO GATHER DATA
Not every tween and teen vape. But, a 78% increase in rates of use by high schoolers in the past year alone mean it’s more likely than not that your child will at least try vaping. The covertness of vaping makes it difficult – but not impossible – for you to investigate the possibility that your kid is habitually vaping. Put on your parental detective hat and start sleuthing over the next few weeks for the following clues:
See if you notice:
- Bloodshot eyes that can’t be explained by allergies or swimming
- Paraphernalia including lighters, atomizers, and flash-drives
- An unexplained reduced appetite, increased thirst, body rash, and/or mouth ulcers. (FDA regulated and approved ingredients such as propylene glycol can cause physical sensitivities and allergies when inhaled.)
- An increased use of (or sudden request for you to purchase) mouthwash and/or eyedrops. Missing cash from your wallet.
- Sudden use or want of a Venmo account. Venmo is where many payment transactions for this habit go down. Familiarize yourself with the dictionary of emojis teens commonly use for their Venmo transactions. The emojis they use can sometimes provide clues as to the nature of their transaction and what they are buying and selling. For instance, a three-pronged black electric plug emoji means thanks for hooking me up and can infer a purchase or sale of an illegal substance. Keep in mind that your goal is to simply look for interesting patterns in their account. Solid proof of nefarious transactions will be difficult to pin down by the very nature of insular teen emoji references.
Listen for:
- Stories from your teen that don’t quite add up. Does your gut tell you they’re making lies of omission? Have you heard rumors about your kid’s friend(s) getting busted?
- Increased requests for money.
Smell:
- Your kid when you hug them. (Keep your inhale low-key.) If they have recently vaped, there will be a faintly sweet acrid odor that is not your child’s normal scent or the scent of their cosmetic body spray/cologne/perfume.
Intuit:
- The credibility of your teen’s response when you (calmly) ask them, “Have you been vaping?” Some teens will provide a defensive answer without actually confirming or denying they vaped. This type of non-answer answer is typical of a teen who values honesty but does not want to answer your question honestly that they did indeed vape.
Increase your awareness of signs and symptoms of vaping to become an informed parent, not an accusatory one.
STEP 4: MONITOR
If your senses and your intuition inform you that it’s likely that your teen is vaping, consider monitoring them more closely. Surveillance monitoring is a delicate operation that does not come without risks to the quality of your relationship. Ideally, you already have an explicit digital monitoring agreement and your teen already knows that red flag behaviors can and may result in a reduction in their privacy at your discretion. Reducing your teen’s privacy requires you to be boundaried and scrupulous in your execution of the monitoring and in your holding of all the potential private information you will learn about your teen. Adolescent development requires an age-appropriate level of privacy. If you deem it necessary to restrict their privacy due to concern about their health and safety (vaping is a legit health and safety issue), know that you will discover at least a few other secrets that your teen is keeping from you. Bear in mind that it is normal and expected for teens to keep secrets from parents as they navigate their newly formed private lives. If you don’t trust yourself to discern health and safety concerns from normal and expected adolescent issues that deserve privacy, don’t snoop in the first place. Your lack of necessary discernment wouldn’t be wise for your emotional well-being and could falsely erode your trust.
Monitoring can take several forms:
- View their texts, internet search history
- View their accounts – bank, Venmo, social media
- View their call history
- Search their backpack, bedroom, bathroom, and car
Parents who monitor digital devices must discern valid health and safety concerns from your teen’s secrets that deserve privacy.
STEP 5: MAKE YOUR BOTTOM LINE CLEAR
Now that you’re adequately informed and appropriately concerned, it’s time to proactively and clearly communicate your values about illegal substance use to your child. It is reasonable to expect your teen to follow the law. Speak to them about your value for health and safety and why nicotine use is not healthy or safe. Forbidding illegal choices and valuing healthy ones provides you with leverage for enforcing natural consequences if your teen vapes. (More like when according to current statistics.)
Next, let your child know what you expect. As a judicious parent, you can hit the sweet spot between upholding a policy of no illegal substance use and expecting their good judgment even if they choose to try vaping. Your goal is to come across as a reasonable parent. You will not be able to make your kid’s choice about vaping for her and sensible parents accept this fact.
Meet reality on reality’s terms. Your kid can decide to vape regardless of your expectations and consequences.
Define, for your kid, what experimentation and good judgment mean to you. Let them know you will be on the lookout for signs of habitual use because you care about their health and well-being. Connect-the-dots for your teen that, despite the commonality of habitual vaping and its “normalcy” among youth culture, you will not tolerate vaping because that choice indicates a lack of good judgement about their health and the law. If your teen makes this mistake then the correction you will expect is that they cease vaping.
Lay out the consequences of vaping for your child so she knows what to expect. Structure the repercussions from a place of self-control. Make sure that what you add or take away – to reinforce the desired correction you want your teen to make – is truly within your domain of oversight and management. Take away allowance and driving in response to vaping and you create influential external motivation for your child that you completely control. Your teenager will be persuaded to evaluate if her choice to vape is worth losing income. S/he will think twice about losing the independence and freedom that driving provides. Add random drug tests to monitor the cessation of nicotine and you leverage their desire for privacy that will be compromised when s/he pees in a cup for you. Think twice about restricting access to the friends you suspect also vape. Although forbidding certain friends is tempting, doing so begins to diminish your sphere of influential oversight and waters down the impact of the consequence. Because your kid can still vape with friends in the school bathroom or lie about their sleepover location to thwart your management of consequences, s/he knows your management over friends only reaches so far.
Remember, you can only control yourself – choose consequences that you can supervise without any obstruction.
Incentivize your teen’s good judgement: use what they care about to influence, not control, their choice to vape.
STEP 6: ENFORCE CONSEQUENCES
Consistent follow-through is a parent’s and a kid’s best friend. Doing what you say you’ll do builds trust and lets your teen know you mean what you say. This holds equally true for promises to head to the mall as it does withholding their allowance for the week as a consequence for vaping. How you enforce consequences matters too. Parental unity is important; be sure you and your co-parent have a previously agreed-upon response to your teen’s vaping to avoid assuming Good Cop/Bad Cop roles. Regulating your emotions successfully results in your neutral tone and factual words as you remind them of the anticipated consequences.
Take a non-emotional approach to implementing consequences so that the energy and focus of your child’s choice to vape remains where it belongs – on them.
In the event of vaping, enforce the previously communicated tighter restrictions of freedom until your teen has demonstrated behavior that rebuilds your trust in her judgment. Keep consequences time-limited. The key is to give them the opportunity to learn from their mistakes by trying again and short-term privilege restriction allows for this. Grounding your child for weeks or taking away unrelated privileges invites their resentment and resistance. You want to encourage their amends and correction via discipline, not punishment.
These six steps can help diminish the ability of this nationwide vaping epidemic to negatively impact your child’s health and well-being. Any day that passes when they’re not inhaling liquid nicotine is one more day that their lungs aren’t poisoned and their brain is allowed to develop uninhibited by toxic chemicals. That helps us parents feel pretty darn powerful.
Suck it vaping industry.