Georgia is into bugs, fairies, mermaids, Tinkerbell, pirates, kittens and SMOKING. She loves to play the Smoking Game, which is "pretend it's the time before people knew smoking was bad for you" and then proceed to light a pretend pipe and “smoke.” Well, she gives us pipes, but her poison is usually cigarettes. She "smokes" sticks and kazoos with such flair and ease, wrist cocked, splashing attitude, it freaks me out no end. The other day she was mad at me and went to her room, slamming the door shut. After a few minutes I checked on her—she was sitting there naked except for her play stilettos and tiara, with her smoking paraphernalia strewn around her (sticks, a wood chip “lighter” and a saucer for an ashtray). EEK!

In paranoid, blame-the-media form I looked for influences. I could only come up with Cruella DeVille, and I instantly flogged myself for letting Georgia have any screen time at all. But then I realized so many beloved old children’s books have pipe-smoking papas, she’s seen old record covers with people smoking, even in our smoke-free existence smoking creeps in. We live in a hip neighborhood where a lot of alterna-types hang out. Since there’s very little indoor smoking here, there are outdoor sections for the many restaurants, and loads of part-time hippie kids playing guitar or just oozing patchouli, smoking. It skews reality, but on the street it can look like the majority of people smoke.

Despite her love of the Smoking Game, Georgia hates real smoking. When she sees smokers she slaps her hand against her head and covers her face, aghast, but in classic pre-school fashion, she has to work through each obsession from the inside out. I try to be patient with each new phase and let it play out, but this one is very hard for me. After a recent walk Georgia declared, “I hate people who smoke!” I tried to give her some empathy toward smokers, explaining how people usually start smoking because they think it makes them look cool or feel older, and that once a person starts smoking it’s really hard to give it up.

She asked, “Do you know anyone who smokes?”

“I know very few people who still smoke, but I know some people who used to smoke.”

“Do you know anyone who is beautiful who smokes?”

“No,” I lied, “I don’t know any beautiful people who smoke.”

When she sees a beautiful smoker, she is especially horrified. I point out all the beautiful people who are not smoking (my range of beauty is much broader than hers, but sometimes our visions intersect). And I tell her how smoking will affect the beautiful person’s skin, lungs, breath, mind, and body, but that’s coming from Mom, and the beautiful person is a walking, talking, if not yet hacking, advertisement for the glamour of smoking. I know that’s going into Georgia’s head, and that it’s titillating. Someday she’ll be the target of ads and product placement that glamorize smoking. Is there any way I can win this one?

I have a little hope. After four years and a couple of tries, Georgia gave up her binky. It was her decision, with very little pressure from us: from time to time we’d remind her that it wasn’t good for her teeth, and we’d ask her to take it out when she was talking to us so we could understand her, but we didn’t make a big deal about it. On Halloween night she decided she’d give it to Baby Edie, her best friend’s little sister, and she did. She had terrible withdrawals, sobbing fits, cries of “I just can’t make it without my binky!”

It broke my heart, and I would have retrieved it if she had asked, but she kept up the fight. It was really hard, she didn’t know what to do with her mouth, and she got jittery and irritable. But with lots of patience, tons of special treats placed around the usual binky spots, a bit of extra TV watching, and even some gum, she made it through. But she still misses it, and sometimes forgets she gave it up. She’s been a “non-nutritive sucker” from day one, and her binky was a four-year habit—it will take a while before not having one feels normal. I am so proud of her, and it makes me feel like we can get through the next tough thing.

I also realized now she can really understand the smokers: she knows what it’s like to give up a really deep-rooted, some may argue enjoyable, habit. In one of her moments of utter disgust at a smoker I reminded her how hard giving up her binky was, and told her that giving up smoking is even harder.

She got quiet, “Mommy, do they miss their cigarettes when they quit smoking?”

“Maybe, but their lungs are happier just like your teeth are happier.”

She glanced back at the smoker, wrinkled her nose and said, “Yuk! I’m never smoking!”

I just hope that habit sticks.