mm's encounter with the ultimate nicotine addict.......

ok, so kentucky may be one of the leading tobacco producing states....but the public health folks require that every client served be screened for tobacco use, or for second hand smoke exposure.....and so today, during the wic signup process.....i asked a 17 year old new mom and her mother about smoking.........and the baby's grandmother went ballistic........gentle readers......visualization is essential here.......think ursula, the purple sea witch in the little mermaid........only with poorly dyed blonde hair with dark roots......imagine her up in my face demanding to know if it was against the law for her to not smoke in her own home......and demanding to know who was going to come and rip those cigarettes out of her hand whenever she lights up around that baby......and were we going to try to take that baby away because she smoked....because if we thought we could we had another thing coming......this woman went off........of course.....she dkept repeating the expected lines.....i smoked when my children were little and nothing happened to them.......it is never worth the words to counter every argument.....i simply asked her if she was aware of the risk if s.i.d.s./colic/ear infections/asthma/adhd in households with secondhand smoke....and made sure she knew that i was not singling her out....that we are obligated to make sure that all of our clients know that their personal habits have detrimental effects upon others........and when she asked how other smokers took this sort of news......i replied that most have already started smoking outside of the house, to make sure that their precious grandchildren are protected from these possibible problems.......she wasn't buying any of it......or at least pretended to act like this was all news to her......the news about adhd is quite recent........and hits home.......our youngest child's birth mother smokes like a smokestack.......which could explain why our youngest has learning difficulties......makes sense to me....less oxygen to the brain = less brain development.....but the grandmother i spoke to seemed unaware of the less oxygen part....or the carbon monoxide part.......or the chemicals in smoke part........next we will find that cigarette smokers tend to have anger management problems because of the multi-exposure to damaging substances.......i can give them the name of the perfect poster person...............