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When parents become aware that their high school or middle school child has been smoking, they must be careful in the ways in which they discourage their children from continuing the habit. Sometimes lecturing about the evils of tobacco proves to be dismal at best. Children are not concerned about their health or the prospect of dying over an extended amount of time because of smoking. It's hard for them to think past their present.

The best approach is to talk to your children about the ways that smoking cigarettes will affect them in the short-term. Stinky smelling hair and clothing, yellow teeth, bad breath, shortness of breath and reduced stamina are all effective ways of discouraging your children from smoking.

Remember that the children who are smoking are the ones that have the most access to cigarettes. So if you smoke, know that you could be their primary supply source. A cigarette here and there may go undetected to someone who smokes a pack or two of cigarettes a day, but it's enough to get a young person and their friends hooked.

Be sure to talk to your kids about not smoking beginning in grade school, as studies show that 25 percent of children under 13 have smoked an entire cigarette. Try role-playing with your children to help them practice what they might say if they are offered a cigarette.

Quitting smoking is the best thing you can to help keep your kids from smoking. The Mayo Clinic reports that only 2 percent of adolescent smokers have nonsmoking parents. By contrast, 15 percent of adolescent smokers have both a mother and father who smoke.

In fighting the battle against smoking, we need to take a look at our future. Will our children of today be the smokers of tomorrow? We do not have a passive role in this matter. When almost half of adolescents try smoking by the time they are in the 9th grade and 90 percent of smokers tried smoking before they were 18 years old, parents have to take an active role in preventing their children from smoking.

Parents need to monitor and set limits on their children's movie viewing habits. In the November 2006 issue of Pediatrics, a study found that if parents restricted their children from watching R-rated movies and other content that depicted smoking and drinking in a positive light, that pre-teens were significantly less likely to smoke or drink themselves.

Those parents that took an even tougher stance and allowed their children no R-rated movie viewing were more than two-thirds less likely to smoke than the kids who were allowed to watch some R-rated movies.

This is a situation where we cannot be too careful. The perceptions that children take away from movies are long lasting. When there's an image of a sultry man or woman smoking a cigarette, followed by the next exhilarating scene, children perceive the characters that smoke as "cool." After seeing enough of those images, you can understand why they are more likely to try a cigarette when one is offered to them.

It's a good idea to preview the movies that your children are watching. You would be surprised. Sometimes you may see an image that depicts smoking or drinking in PG-13 movies, or somewhere else you didn't expect. Taking an active role in the material that goes into your children's minds will make a difference in the choices they make in the future.