I bet you love your child to bits and would protect them fiercely.

But if you smoke, you could be forcing them to smoke too!

And the more you continue to smoke, the more impact you could be making on the long term health of you and your child.

Let's see, do you: Teach them to guard against stranger danger? Warn them about pools, roads, electricity, sharp objects? Wash your hands and teach them to do so also? Dab their cuts with antiseptic? Buy and prepare wholesome food?

However long your caring and safety list is, nothing comes close to the dangers of smoking. Smoking causes health problems that will seriously affect and shorten your life and your child's life. (Fact: 50% of all smokers die early of a smoking related disease.)

• For a start, your children are watching what you do. Even 2-year-olds are likely to "smoke" and "drink" in pretend play if their parents smoke and drink regularly. You are their role model, and you're setting them up to be just like you. (Fact: 12-year-olds whose parents smoked were more than twice as likely to become smokers themselves from this age on.)
• A child smoking its parent's passive tobacco smoke, will average six times as many respiratory infections as a child of non-smoking parents.
• Pregnant? Compared with non-smokers, pregnant smokers are up to two times more likely to deliver babies pre-term, and up to 3.5 times more likely to deliver low-birth-weight babies, with all the attendant health risks. Mothers who smoke during or after pregnancy are three times more likely to lose their babies to SIDS.
• The dangers of second-hand smoke have been validated by all relevant scientific bodies. Briefly cigarette smoke:
• Contains over 300 cancer causing agents that have been proven to have direct links to lung, cervical, breast, and most other cancers.
• Has a toxic mix of chemicals that is known to cause heart disease, vascular problems, amputations, emphysema, asthma, bronchitis, fatigue, headaches and wrinkles.
• Affects gums, eyes, sinuses, reproduction, and the immune system … there's not one good reason to have one more smoke to afflict you and others near and dear to you.

Smoking is the largest single cause of preventable disease and early death. For a child, smoking by parents more often leads to the child smoking as a teen.

"The only thing you should light up around kids is their eyes."

For more information or help to quit smoking, go to:
www.quitguide.com