Q: Despite all of the television warnings and some strong lectures from his doctor, my son continues to smoke. Both his wife and I have tried everything to get him to quit, but he will not listen to us. He is 34 years old, overweight and a prime target for a heart attack.
A: Check the search engines on your computer and you will find a number of different programs to help your son stop smoking. Nicotine gum, the patch, hypnosis and acupuncture are all programs that probably have merit. But none of the programs work unless the people trying them have some motivation to stop smoking. Without co-operation from your son, nothing that you do will help.
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You and your son’s wife need to change the goal to help your son. Right now your goal is to get him to quit, and that is perfectly understandable. But it is not working. A more reasonable and workable goal is to try to nudge your son from complete denial of the problem he has with smoking to some determination to do something about his habit.
In other words, your goal changes from getting him to quit smoking to encouraging him to think about it. This is called motivational interviewing, and it has three questions you can ask your son.
The first question for him is, “what might you do about your smoking?” This is a bit tricky. You are not asking him necessarily to quit smoking. You are asking him what he can do to get it under more control. No doubt you have watched him being ruled by his nicotine habit. In this question you are simply asking what control he can take back to regulate part of his smoking addiction.
After he has answered the first question and after you have listened to him carefully, then ask, “how ready are you to make even the smallest change that you have identified?”
On a scale from one to 10, he may opt for only two, but, remember, when you are asking this question you are not asking him for a commitment, You are trying to get him to think about what his possibilities are.
The third question is “why are you not more ready?” This is the most important question because you are asking him to remember some of those few moments when he was not enslaved to his smoking addiction. As your son starts to recall moments of success, he is more likely to move forward.
We often forget that most smokers would actually like to stop smoking. Of course they will tell you that smoking is their right and that they smoke because they want to smoke, but most of them continue to smoke because they are afraid that they will, once again, fail if they try to quit. With that kind of a negative attitude, they are not likely to try stopping again.
The third question encourages them to change from remembering the bad times to recalling some of the good times, and that is what makes this question important. All of us, including smokers, are more likely to try things if we think that we can be successful than we will if we think that we are going to fail.
If you get him to consider the three questions I have suggested, you may find, much to your surprise, that he is thinking about quitting. You are more likely to see that happen if you follow this program than if you and his wife continue to try to force him to quit.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan who has taught social work at two universities. Mail correspondence in care of Western Producer, Box 2500, Saskatoon, Sask., S7K 2C4 or e-mail jandrews@producer.com.
