Smoking around kids - indoors

Knowing how bad being around smokers makes ME feel, there's no way in hell I would bring a child into that kind of toxicity. And considering that smoking is so bad for everyone's health, you would think that the smoker would want to make sure that they are not putting anyone, especially small children, at risk for illness. 

It may be sad, but what's more important? I would think growing up healthy and modeling healthy habits would be more important than letting smokers around a small child. Especially if they still smoke indoors. There are other ways for relationships to be built beyond putting children into a home full of smoke and second hand smoke and residue. 

Apparently if I were a good Pea and good mother, my children would never see or know any of their grandparents. That makes me really sad.

I would view it as the grandparent choosing not to have a relationship with my kid.

You want a relationship with my baby, you quit smoking.

I have very bad reactions to smoke. If I smell cigarette smoke, even outside in an open area, I instantly get a headache and feel like I will vomit.
I move my kids away immediately.

No way in absolute hell I would ever, ever, for any reason take them to the home of someone who smokes.

And, yes, we have had this situation IRL. When I was a baby my great-grandmother smoked. My parents chose not to expose us to her. She died when I was young of a heart attack (you know bc she smoked).

I do have a lot of judgment towards smokers. I do think they are nasty and selfish (and smelly and gross) people.
I would not care if my child did not have a relationship with them.
If you don't want a relationship bad enough to quit smoking, then you don't deserve that relationship.

I see shades of gray on a lot of issues.
But this is absolute black and white for me.
This is absolutely the hill I would die on.

I sat on my grandfather's knee while he smoked Marlboros like a chimney. I loved how the smoke would curl through the air and make shapes like the clouds. I lived in NC, and NOBODY knew anything about the effects of 2nd hand smoke in the early 80s. Even when the rest of the country was getting a clue, the tobacco industry, which was NC's biggest "industry" really pressured the media to not report on the dangers. NC is still one of the areas where people still smoke. 

It is finally illegal to smoke in public buildings. Dh and I were in Chicago when that law passed there, and it was such a relief. 

Dh has had lifelong severe asthma. He wasn't around smoke as an infant, but he almost died from asthma and pneumonia. It turned out that there was BLACK MOLD in the walls of his bedroom. 

MIL's father was a coal miner when she was little. The house was heated with coal. She has severe breathing issues. The coal industry also pressured the media and even doctors about diagnosing people with black lung. 

It's a horrible thing to see anyone, especially someone you love, not be able to breathe. Poor MIL has had it so bad. 

I've had mediastinal emphysema twice--a small lobe in the lung collapses and makes it incredibly difficult to breathe. I had to be hospitalized twice for 4 days and put on oxygen and pain meds because the more you try to breathe normally, the faster the lobe heals.

The second time I had mediastinal emphysema, I was visiting my dad and was around cigarette smoke for less that 5 minutes when we stopped at a small gas station/grill for homemade country ham biscuits that let people smoke inside. I even went outside to get away from the smoke while my dad got the food. 

I didn't feel good afterwards and was having a harder and harder time breathing. It got so bad my dad rushed me to the hospital. I was hospitalized for 4 days again. Dad was really scared. 

Knowing all of this, I couldn't let any child around smoke. 

I would nicely ask my relative to stop the smoking while I visited, but I think a lot of smokers realize the dangers and could understand. I wouldn't threaten, but I'd just ask if they really want to cause the child to suffer. 

My grandfather felt so horrible when he finally heard what second hand smoke was doing to us. That's when he finally quit.

Not quite true. I remember doing a poster on second hand smoke in fourth grade. Because everything else I tried to get my father to quit smoking had failed. I was 9 and had lost my mother the year before and was furious that my father wouldn't take better care of himself. I thought making him feel guilty about what he was doing to his kids might make a difference. That was 1978

I grew up around smokers. I have had to breathe lots of lots of secondhand smoke. Even though I have never actually smoked a cigarette myself… NEVER... I now have asthma and possibly lung cancer ( I have my second CT scan this week ). So no way in hell would I ever expose a child of any age to secondhand smoke.

I'm so sorry you're dealing with that   It is honestly one of my biggest fears, that I will die of a smoking related illness though I've never smoked a cigarette in my life. Really unfair.