Talking to Your Teen Who Vapes URMC Newsroom

Perhaps you want to save money for something important instead of spending money on vape accessories. Or maybe you want to quit vaping to avoid the physical and mental consequences of addiction. If your relationships with friends, partners, or parents have suffered due to your how to deal with peer pressure habit, quitting might improve your social life. Having a list of reasons to quit vaping will help keep you on track whenever you’re tempted to resume the habit. Studies show that over 30% of teens who vape are more likely to start smoking cigarettes than teens who don’t vape.

How to talk to your teen about vaping

Having somewhere to be means you can remove yourself from difficult circumstances. The failures of the D.A.R.E. program are well documented, but if you help your kid “just say no” in their own words, that’s actually a great prevention tactic, according to Jacobs. This means helping kids develop their own script for how they will deal with peer pressure when they inevitably encounter vaping in their peer group.

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Acknowledge positive actions and changes in their life, and offer physical comforting (e.g., a hug) if it feels appropriate. Successful conversations with young people about vaping (and substance use in general) happen when your kid sees you as safe. If you ask questions with a “help me understand so I can best support you” approach, you are more likely to get a productive response from your child.

My Vaping Mistake: Videos of Real Teen Experiences

Megan Jacobs, managing director of product innovation at Truth Initiative, agrees. “Yelling or saying ‘Just stop’ isn’t a productive way of dealing with an addiction.” She notes that e-cigarette companies like Juul are now headed up by former cigarette industry executives, and even jointly owned by cigarette companies.

• If you find yourself in these tricky situations, you can try to avoid them by having an excuse to leave.
• If you’re already a habitual vape user, you might find that cutting nicotine out is a difficult process.
• Or maybe you want to quit vaping to avoid the physical and mental consequences of addiction.
• Vaping nicotine or marijuana can cause long-lasting health problems for your child.
• Vaping hasn’t been around long enough for us to know its long-term effects on the body.
• A good entry point to a conversation is to use an example from everyday life, like a billboard, advertisement, or news report on TV.
• And that addiction can take a damaging toll on your mood and health.

• This resource guide for parents offers advice on keeping children substance free.
• “Parents who have candid conversations with their kids can really make a difference,” says Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin, PhD, who directs TCORS.
• Reflect on how much better you’ll feel when you drop the habit.
• But there are ways to cope without the nicotine and kick the vaping habit.
• If your teen vapes, Krishnan-Sarin says to take it as seriously as any other addiction, and be aware of how hard it is to quit.

So, it’s important to talk with your young or teenage children about the potential dangers of vaping. And, if all else fails, you can talk to your pediatrician about addiction medications that can make quitting a bit more manageable. Five teens tell their real stories about how peer pressure influenced them to start vaping and the mental and physical health effects they endured to quit.

How to quit vaping

Some vapes do contain nicotine, which is an addictive substance, and once you start vaping it can be really tough to stop. According to the NHS, nicotine can be more risky for young people than for adults, as the evidence suggests that the teenage brain is more sensitive to its effects. You don’t want to cause a scene to further aggravate the person who is pressuring you to try the vape. If they still continue to push you, it is completely okay to leave the situation. It doesn’t make you any less of a person to leave a situation that is threatening your health.

Two thirds of teens don’t even realize that e-cigarettes contain addictive nicotine. Careful to avoid “lecture mode,” Dahl recalls that she gently pointed out that the classmates were spreading myths. She kept the conversation going by asking the boys what they thought about vaping.

Help your child manage stress.