US-Americans! I have seen on TV scenes where a father punishes children for bad behavior by making them smoke cigarettes…this seems pretty barbaric. Is this the usual punishment for things like bad grades or blasphemy? Or is only for extreme things like swearing? Just give kids lung cancer?
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I don’t know of it happening any more at all. The only even TV-based example that I can think of is used the first time a kid was caught smoking. The idea was to make the kid so sick from cigarettes that they’d never want to smoke again.
I don’t know if that ever really happened though.
I’ve never even heard of cigarettes as punishment in any other context.
Bro what tv show did you watch?!
Edit: I forget the day
Yes. If they do it again, we make them smoke meth.
My mother (Boomer generation) had a similar experience. She had gotten a candy cigarette from school and was apparently pretending to smoke it at her grandparents’ house. To “teach” her about the dangers of cigarettes, my great-grandmother forced her to smoke a real one down to the end. She threw up violently on the carpet and got punished for that too. She couldn’t have been more than 8 years old.
So no, it’s not normal. My family has been fucked up for generations and this was and is considered abuse. Mom told me that story when I was a teenager like it was no big deal.
This is not a thing.
If it was at one time, it is no longer a thing. The general consensus in US culture since at least the 80s (and possibly before that) is that cigarettes and tobacco in general is no bueno. Pot is cool, tho.
I’ve only ever heard of that as punishment for getting caught smoking, the idea being that making the kid smoke a whole pack will make them so sick they’ll never want to smoke again. But I’ve really only seen this on tv and never heard of anyone being made to do it IRL.
So I know this is probably another April Fool’s post, but my father actually did this to me when I was 14 and was caught smoking for the second time. He made me smoke the rest of what was left in the pack, which was probably 14-15 cigarettes, in the tiny half bathroom in our basement, with no ventilation.
So it actually is a thing some parents do, or at least used to. These days it’d probably (rightfully) get you in big trouble with child services.
I had just graduated HS, went to grad parties that night. Got completely hammered, came home, made it past my parents in the living room and went straight to bed. I woke up during the night and puked all over my room, woke up drunk that morning having to go to work at 8am. Still drunk, didn’t even clean my puke, and my mom lost her shit. My dad, who was driving me to work that morning, made me finish 5 of the remaining 6 beers he had in the fridge prior to leaving. I went to work even drunker, tried to work an entire shift as a fry cook at Long John Silvers, was pretty rough.
The punishment was given out in response to catching the child smoking. The goal was to make them smoke so much they’d get sick and never smoke again. The correlation between cigarettes and smoking was even less clear than it is today, and it’s not that clear today.
No, that is not a thing. TV is not real life. The show you were watching was probably trying to be ironic, showing the parents doing the opposite of what you would expect.
I just think it’s funny that you consider sweating extreme.
Why do people think TV is real?
That’s my question.
The only time I have ever heard of this happening is when the parent caught the kid smoking cigarettes already.
I mean if a 6 year old can’t get straight A on their report card they deserve lung cancer.
this was a tv trope in the 1950s. Please update your tv shows.
I have never seen that in a tv or movie. It absolutely is not something a normal parent would do. Any parent that would do that is an AH who should be arrested.
Nah in my house we joke about the kids blasphemy, hell I tried to keep track on day of which kid blasphemed more (it was my very innocent looking daughter).
Usually I’ve seen this as a punishment for smoking, but not in the last twenty years.
This happened to my boyfriend when he was a teen but it was a blunt instead of cigarettes. His dad caught him and made him smoke the whole thing in front of him. He grounded him, made him be the one to tell his mom, and then his mom doubled the punishment. He never smoked again.
This was a punishment for a kid who got caught smoking. Make the kid finish a pack in one sitting, they’d never want to smoke again, right?
I don’t think it was ever a widespread practice and it’s pretty outdated.
500 cigarettes
No. Smoking isn’t very popular here, most parents wouldn’t even have cigarettes around.
You’re reading it wrong. It’s not punishment for bad behavior. It’s an (unsuccessful— backfiring?) attempt to prevent smoking in the future.
Dad caught you trying a cigarette. “Oh, Mr. Big Shot, huh? Think you wanna be a smoker like the cool kids?” (Dripping with smug sarcasm. Never mind that he’s unapologetically 3 packs a day.) “Think cigarettes are cool, do ya? Well, you can smoke a whole carton, then…. That’ll show ya how ‘cool’ they are!”
And then he sits with you at the kitchen table lighting them for you one after the other until you puke. You’ve learned your lesson, never to touch a filthy cancer stick again. (Or else developed your nicotine addiction in a single day.)
Edit: I don’t know that this ever actually happened. It’s a movie and TV trope.
Edit edit: a typo.
I have only ever seen that used as a tv trope when a child was caught smoking, and they are made to smoke the entire pack to make them sick and make them not want to smoke ever again. It is not a general punishment on TV and was never a common punishment.
Even when cigarettes were cheap, I knew of no parents who did this, it was a tv thing only. Now you’d have to be nuts, much too expensive. Also physical assault and child abuse, but good lord, so pricey.