Parents' Smoking, Drinking Influence Children - Children's Health - MSNBC.Com 09/05/2005 06:24 PM

Parents' smoking, drinking influence children - Children's Health - MSNBC.com 09/05/2005 06:24 PM

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Parents' smoking, drinking influence children Study: Kids' 'play behavior' shows awareness of alcohol and tobacco use Health Health Library Katrina's Impact RELATED STORIES | What's this? Updated: 4:46 p.m. ET Sept. 5, 2005 Women's Health • NBC: Shrimp on the barbie for draft Diet & Fitness CHICAGO - Preschoolers pretending to shop for morning Men's Health a Barbie doll’s social evening were more likely • Rimes, Destiny's Child will be real dolls Cancer to choose cigarettes if their parents smoked, • RuPaul's new doll a drag? No way! Children's Health and wine or beer if their parents drank, a • Parents drop objection to girl's cancer Infectious study found. treatment Diseases • TV in child's room may hinder learning Aging Researchers observing the children’s play found Heart Health that the ones who watched PG-13 or R-rated Stem Cell movies also were more likely to choose alcohol MOST POPULAR Research for Barbie. • Most Viewed • Top Rated • Most E-mailed Sexual Health • Officials say major levee breech repaired Alzheimer's A 4-year-old girl chose Barbie-sized tobacco in Disease • Bush chooses Roberts to replace Rehnquist the pretend store and said: “I need this for my Pet Health • Holloway’s mother leaves Aruba man. A man needs cigarettes.” More Health • Indonesia jet crashes into city; 147 dead News Story continues below • The Lost City U.S. News • Most viewed on MSNBC.com World News advertisement Business Sports Entertainment Tech / Science ECS: Healthy Heart Weather Helpers Get Buffeted at Health ESC: For Heart Travel Failure Initial Blogs Etc. Therapy, Beta- Local News ECS: Arixtra Halves Major Bleeding Newsweek Events in Acute Multimedia News Video Most Popular NBC NEWS A 6-year-old boy offered the doll cigarettes and said: “Honey, have MSNBC TV some smokes. Do you like smokes? I like smokes.” Today Show

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9216875/ Page 1 of 4 Parents' smoking, drinking influence children - Children's Health - MSNBC.com 09/05/2005 06:24 PM

Nightly News Parents who watched from behind a one-way mirror were surprised Meet the Press by their children’s choices, said study co-author Madeline Dalton of Dateline NBC Dartmouth Medical School.

'A very humbling experience' “It’s a very humbling experience to be a parent and see your children mimic your behaviors,” she said.

The study suggests that prevention efforts should target younger children, Dalton said. It was published Monday in the September issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The study included 120 children, ages 2 to 6. An adult researcher Advertisement led a standardized play activity in which each child, acting as a MSN SHOPPING Barbie or Ken doll, shopped for a visiting friend. A store stocked with 133 miniature items gave the children choices — including meat, fruit, vegetables, snacks, nonalcoholic drinks, cigarettes, beer and wine.

The children could “buy” anything they wanted by filling a small grocery cart and taking it to a small checkout counter.

Fall Home Guide Twenty-eight percent of the children bought cigarettes, and 61 • Home Makeover percent bought alcohol. The children whose parents smoked were • Shop by Color almost four times more likely to buy cigarettes. The children whose • Bedroom ideas parents drank at least monthly were three times more likely to buy • Kitchen hits alcohol.

Children who watched adult-content movies were five times more likely to buy alcohol, but the researchers did not find a statistically significant link between movie-watching and choosing cigarettes.

'Little learning machines' The study suggests that parents should be careful about the movies their children watch, said Craig Anderson, who studies media violence at Iowa State University. “Kids are basically little learning machines. Whatever the content is in front of them, they’re going to pick it up,” Anderson said.

RESOURCE GUIDE The children in the study were mostly white and their parents were mostly college educated. Smoking rates were lower among the • Personals with parents than in the general population, but alcohol use was fairly PerfectMatch.com high, Dalton said. A random sample would have made the findings • Buy Life Insurance more relevant to the general population, she said. • expedia.com Researchers have recognized for years that young children are • Shopping aware of cigarette advertising. A 1991 study found that 90 percent of 6-year-olds correctly matched the Joe Camel cartoon character with cigarettes in a researcher-led matching game.

The value of the new study is its emphasis on parents’ behavior, said Dr. Joseph DiFranza of the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

“If parents don’t want their kids to be smoking they shouldn’t be setting the example,” he said. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9216875/ Page 2 of 4 Parents' smoking, drinking influence children - Children's Health - MSNBC.com 09/05/2005 06:24 PM

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