"I think I want to quit but my parents and all of my friends smoke. I just don't know how I am going to do it because they won't quit." As a Quit Coach, this is something I hear often from teenagers. Furthermore, the teen I am talking with usually has ambivalence about quitting in the first place, as many don't relate to the long-term health impact or have incentive to quit in the first place.

A recent study by the University of Montreal in Quebec suggests that there are multiple risk factors surrounding why teens start smoking. Researcher Jennifer O'Loughlin tracked 877 pre-teen students for 5 years and studied the factors which likely contributed to them picking up the habit. Nearly half of the students studied began smoking over the course of the five years. The risk factors discovered were mixed, ranging from being around parents and friends who smoke, the teen's self-esteem, alcohol use, age, and level of academic success.

Growing up in a home with smokers and thinking back to my first experience smoking as a teen, I remember the thrill of trying my first cigarette. I deviously snuck my first pack out of the smoking drawer where my parents routinely left their monthly supply of "cigs." I recall briefly considering my grandfather who had smoked his whole life and eventually died of lung cancer, but this was still not enough to deter me. After all, in my twelve-year-old mind I had a long time before I was "old" and had to think about lung cancer.

There is no doubt, the first drag made me cough, sputter and wonder what the appeal was in the first place. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that I had seen my parents and friends smoke and they eventually "got over" the initial "bad parts" of it. In fact, they actually looked forward to their smoke. I often wonder now, if the cigarettes had never been in the drawer, if my parents had talked to me about the difficulties they had in quitting, would I have ever picked up my first one? I have talked to many smokers who have considered this very same thing in their process to quit.

According to O'Loughlin, the factors that contribute to teen smoking are individual, far-reaching and include more than just being around friends and family who smoke and I agree. However, as a parent of a teenage daughter I found it hard to control for such factors as friends, self-esteem, and academic success. It's hard enough to pin her down for a ten-minute conversation!

I often think about my daughter and my twelve-year-old self when I talk with teens who are quitting. As a Quit Coach it is difficult to hear when teens feel as though they are not getting family support. So while we can't control for many factors in their life that O'Loughlin points to, we may be able to make a difference in providing the right kind of support.

So how exactly do we do this, you ask?

Support can take many forms, such as a simple conversation from a smoking (or non-smoking) parent about the future and how difficult it is to quit as time progresses. This may also mean making cigarettes in the home less available to others in the household. Often I hear teens say they would be more likely to quit if their family members smoked outside or in a designated area that they know they could easily avoid. Most helpful is often just checking in with your teen to find out what they need to feel supported in their quit.

Just one of these small changes may make a difference or give your teenager something to ponder for the future. Who knows, we too may end up learning a thing or two from our teenagers as well!