Education is vital to right parenting.

Why do we have children taking drugs, stealing, begging on the streets, involved in child-prostitution and smoking? They could be doing it for the money or the pleasure, unaware of the dangers to themselves. The thing is if those children have parents, parents who are supposed to be their protectors and educators, what have those parents done to ensure that the children are not involved in such dangerous activities?

Perhaps those parents had not sufficient education or knowledge of the dangers of such pursuits and they think it is alright for the children to experience such things. Without enough education and knowledge or the maturity to understand the seriousness of the problem, there could be parents who think it is alright to do some of the things we believe are wrong or dangerous.

Recently, on You-tube was this video of an Indonesian two-year old obese toddler who smoke forty cigarettes a day. It is not so much the number of cigarettes that grabs the reader as the age of the child. At that age, how could the child be able to take up smoking if not for the introduction to cigarettes by his own father. The father did that to him at the age of eighteen months.

What was worse was the fact that that father said there was nothing wrong with his son smoking as he was in good health. Of course, he was still in good health. Smoking in itself does not kill but it weakens the lungs and the body with the toxins it brings, giving disease such as cancer the opportunity to strike. However, should cancer be detected it may be a little too late for the father to help his son although there are cases of recovery from cancer. Obviously, the poor father does not understand that a month's cigarette smoke may not damage his health but with his addiction to nicotine, could he stop completely and if not, after many months or years of smoking what can possibly happen to his lungs and health. Well, the father probably did not read about any research where cigarette smoke has been found to be hazardous to health.

At this point, I remember that there are individuals who are still healthy in their seventies despite many years of smoking. But then I wish to point out that such individuals have a body well taken care of with enough exercise to get rid of the toxins ingested. They have constantly been active and are not couch potatoes. Their organs are also in tip-top condition and smoking is their only abuse of their bodies.

But then, how many smokers exercise sufficiently to get rid of the toxins inhaled or drink enough water to help their kidneys remove the toxins. Smell the sweat or urine of heavy smokers and the nicotine smell is sure to be evident in them. And if we do not get rid of those toxins, where do you think the toxins will remain? Where else but in the body, of course. The toxins will then poison the only one body that we have been given. Sorry, there is no spare part yet.

If parents understand the dangers of having toxins in the body through smoking or the environment or certain food and drinks, as they love their children, they would certainly not expose their children to the toxins. Therefore, education to all adults is just as important as it is to all children.