Talking to kids about vaping…

Talking to kids about vaping…The early bird approach…versus the danger download…

One of the many difficult conversations we know we need to have as parents is the one about substance use / abuse. From time to time, I get invited to speak to parents about ‘The Party Scene’…This is usually in the Summer term when exam pressures peak – at the same time as the sun comes out, the light, warm summer nights afford greater freedoms, and the social scene takes off…

I have a history of specialising in Safeguarding at secondary schools in the UK. And as a trainer, and consultant, I support the work of many pastoral and safeguarding leads in various ways – so have a pretty good handle of what’s happening on the teen scene and when…It seems to be a truth universally acknowledged, that Year 8 is certainly where vaping takes off for both boys and girls – and can start to become part of everyday life and bonding for boys.

Quite often when I do a parent talk on the party scene, there’s a great deal of interest in what the school is doing about instructing and informing the kids about the evils of vapes and other similar entry-level substances that get commonly used and abused…Parents are well aware that this is an important topic – they want their kids to have the knowledge and understanding that will help them make wise decisions.

However – here’s the problem. School-led sessions on vapes and cigarettes are subject to the following issues:

1. Kids generally give feedback that they could have had the sessions earlier.
2. There is no Goldilocks sweet spot on the timing front. Too early, and parents complain that suggestible kids are being exposed to these risqué sides of teenage exploration too soon. The kids reject it and complain that they are too young and only children…Too late, and it’s shutting the stable door well after the habit is formed and group bonding status is in play. Think carefully before complaining about a school led session being ‘too soon’. It’s unlikely to do much – or any – lasting damage, and opens the door to you having some good pre-emptive and protective conversations. It also gives you clues about things that are making your child a little anxious and vulnerable in their journey into & through adolescence. Over-protected children and teens make for brittle and unprepared later life…Any distress caused is entirely workable. By all means communicate with the school as part of a feedback process, but stay calm and work through it in a strengthening way with your child. It’s always worth finding out why they chose to schedule the session when they did.
3. Any school led session on social and emotional life skills or vulnerable topics has a performative aspect. It’s happening in the theatre of the classroom or school hall – especially if there’s an outside speaker drafted in to do a specialised talk. The dramas around who is or is not already vaping and on the ‘inside track’ create a distracting frisson…
4. Fear-talk intelligence might land cognitively, but under these conditions, it is hard to get even the most effective presentation to get beyond the general sense of teenage invulnerability…’That’s bad…it happened to them…it won’t happen to me…’
5. We’ve all had those cringey ‘Just say no’ talks… South Park sums it up….https://youtu.be/KeprIqxrDQo?si=ExLe-XE21sPV5hJp

The facts about the rates of young people vaping. As of 2025, 20% of 11–17-year-olds in Great Britain have tried vaping.

Fewer persist.

It is interesting, to see that the data in the UK and the US converge around it being 1 in 5 young people who vape. In an ideal world it would be less – of course. But it’s far from the norm. The trouble is, those who do vape are often quite visible in school life…known and a bit notorious…Often those who have status, and are early adopters of the party scene…making it seem to the uninitiated as though vaping is ubiquitous. Normal even. When really it’s not.

This is useful in our toolkit for talking to our kids – to rebalance this perspective, and some of the myths and legends of teen-dom, that it’s prolific, normal, inevitable…

– an extract from the ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) website:

7% of 11–17-year-olds currently vape. This is made up of 4% who vape regularly (more than once a week) and 3% who vape occasionally (less than once a week).

Vaping is more common among older children. 5% of 11–15-year-olds currently vape, compared to 12% of 16–17-year-olds.

Youth vaping rates have stabilised after increasing sharply between 2021 and 2023. This increase was likely driven by the emergence of cheap, disposable vapes which are heavily marketed towards young people.

These findings are from the annual ASH/YouGov survey of vaping behaviour among 11–17-year-olds in Great Britain. The full survey findings are available in the ASH fact sheet: Use of vapes (e-cigarettes) among young people in Great Britain 2025.

Diagram source: ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) website. Smokefree GB Youth Surveys 2013-2025

As a nicotine-delivery system, vapes could not be more child-friendly. They appeal to the sweet palate of the young: Blue Razz Lemonade and Watermelon Ice apparently are flavours topping the popularity charts.

There isn’t as much longevity in the data collected to help us understand the health risks – but we know that these are variable. Especially when we factor in the black market versions sold to underaged kids by their high street sweet shop / corner shop of choice…

Vapes are also a great deal harder to detect than your standard packet of fags. They come in all manner of shapes, sizes and colours. One pastoral lead told me that a vape in the shape of a USB stick had been especially popular with her Year 8s and 9s. To the extent that an information evening was held to enable parents to recognise the Vape paraphernalia hiding in plain sight in their homes…

Why facts-and-info fear talk doesn’t work so well with teens…

Teens especially, and humans generally live by the ‘exception’ rule. And we all do this to some extent. We know the rules of a healthy lifestyle. But despite the logic of all this knowledge, we have a way of being that circumvents these rules. We tell ourselves that it’s dreadful that that lifestyle choice led to this heart condition or that liver failure – but we still reach for the chips and the extra cheeky glass of red.

Teens are primed by evolution to have a drive for exploration – especially peer-to-peer led experimentation. They can easily live on a two track basis whereby they can mirror exactly the learning that their teachers and parents want to hear in those educative moments and yet go do the very form of risk taking under scrutiny anyway.

It’s a form of cognitive dissonance, and it must have some sort of function – perhaps it’s part of the development of their individuality – rather than stay compliantly by their adult guide’s sides, they need to cut loose and in some spheres of their private lives, do the exact opposite of the advice given…

The teenage cloak of invulnerability…a forcefield for experimentation over sense…

At one time, when I was a Deputy Head, we used to invite the great and the good to give a ‘Sixth Form Lecture’ and stay and have lunch afterwards. I remember talking to the geneticist Steve Jones who talked about his research into whether having insights into your genetic inheritance would influence behaviour in young smokers who had been tested to see if they had the genes that made them at high risk for emphysema. The teens that tested positive – and their families – were given support in understanding what this meant, how this felt, and what they could do about it. There was no difference in smoking cessation between the teenage smokers who did and did not have the gene. None. Despite the powerful logical incentive to stop, they did not.

Indeed in the adult and teen population at large, the negative effects of addictions take a long time, and can do vast amounts of damage to health, life opportunity, growth, and relationships. And yet the addiction persists – and this is perhaps one of the defining features of addictive patterns of behaviour. That despite the wreckage caused, it is still prioritised over growth, life, health, and connection.

I’m not at all saying that teens are like addicts. Or that they are addicts. But as parents especially, we need to be more aware that is we want conversations about risk-taking behaviour like smoking, vaping drinking to land, we need to steer away from lecturing, and fear-talk.

When we lecture our kids, we might call it ‘conversation’ but, frankly, unless they are also talking a good percentage of the time, that’s a con. When we lead with the facts and info, teens often end up feeling slightly overwhelmed, slightly defensive, feeling untrusted and a bit persecuted about why you’re doing this to them. ‘So random…so embarrassing!’

The longer we monologue, the more they shut down and close off. …And also, the less likely they are to turn towards those scenarios where we want to connect over life’s heavier, riskier stuff.

The danger download makes us feel better, like we’re in control, we ticked that one off. But research has often shown it to be less effective. In the late ‘80s / early ‘90s, a study was done on the effectiveness of parent ‘safe sex’ conversations educating their children about the dangers of AIDS. Most of the parents said they had had that conversation. Most of their kids reported no memory of it whatsoever.

Another consequence of fear talk is that we deselect ourselves from their trusted ally team – when we want to be at the top of their list. Not only for disaster recovery – but from those little check-ins over lower-level worry-worms. When we’ve gone on and on about the most dramatic and fearful data we can find to put them off vapes, counterwill brings their natural ‘nah’ counterargument in…Yeah, some cheap illegal vapes have bad stuff in them, but not all…

More importantly though, with the fear-talk, we’ve raised the stakes so high that if their friend or they have had a try of one and feel a bit rubbish, they’re less likely to see us as a safe sounding board and more likely to fear the risk of our disapproval. Or that we’ll go off on one and take action that they can’t control – like speaking to other parents, calling the school etc.

In summary, this is the bottom line. Experiential learning is the hallmark of adolescence. They are developmentally wired to have blind-spots for danger. Experimentation and cheating danger is exciting and bonding. This drive to explore trumps the danger drive. How many times have I had coaching sessions with parents of teens who have told me that they never raised their child to behave in reckless, sometimes ruthless ways?

With our more fully developed prefrontal cortex, we often run towards and drink in the language of intelligence – we inform ourselves about the nature of risks out there in life. And we are ready to speak the language of that logic and intelligence. We’re speaking a fundamentally different language. For us Intelligence comes first, and emotion is in check. For them, it’s the opposite. So when we’re operating on the ‘intelligence and information’ frequency, we’re not tuning in to the frequency that works for them.

Schools can – and do – deliver very very good lessons and workshops on all substances. There are many excellent organisations who come in to schools and deliver amazing presentations. But parent should not rely on that, or over-do replicating an information dump just because we’ve seen a scary documentary or read an article.

Conversations with Kids…Vape-talk…Here’s what to do instead…

1. Lots of little conversations, often.
2. Make these genuine curiosity conversations rather than a pressing home of your agenda…
3. Start these far earlier than needed – harness the power of a pre-teen’s observation and imagination.
   • Example – seeing someone near you vaping…
     • You – Wow! That’s quite a cloud! What does that look like to you?
     • It’s funny isn’t it because we don’t generally like to breathe in smoke – what do you think about that?
     • Did you get a smell of it? What did you think?…
     • Why do you think people like to vape? Do you have any ideas or theories?…Interesting…
     • Harness the younger person’s sensory instincts – what they are noticing.
     • Why do you think the vape smoke smells so sweet – almost like sweeties?
     • Sweets and sweet flavours tend to be more for kids than grown-ups…why do you think they make them so sweet?
     • Who might that appeal to? Do you know the difference between sweets and vapes?
     • What are the pros and cons of eating lots of sweets? What are the pros and cons of vaping and vaping a lot?
     • Get to know and understand their theories and ideas.
     • Take an interest in how they interpret and imagine what they see in the different behaviours around them.
4. Let the conversation unfold over time from a secure-base rather than a fear-talk perspective.
5. Lead with questions – let your questions and their answers drive the conversation as a genuine 2-way thinking exchange rather than the one-way download.
   • Example – with an older child, you notice a young person – a teenager vaping.
     • Wow! They look quite young to be vaping. What do you think?
     • Did you know that people under 18 are not allowed to buy vapes. And it’s against the law to sell vapes to people under 18. How do you think they might have got hold of it?
     • Why do you think things like vapes have an age restriction?
     • What do you think makes kids attracted to vapes even thought they aren’t allowed them?
     • Is that a good idea? Why? Why not?

• Drip feed the information. Use teachable moments…
  • Watching a drama or a short video depicting teens or school aged kids vaping.
  • Letting you kid DJ in the car and picking up on lyrics later.
  • Being in a discount store or a corner shop and seeing vapes on sale, or walking past a vape shop…
  • Stay with curiosity, steering the conversation with questions, developing their mind-mindedness, empathy skills and evaluative thinking.
  • Scaffold your questions to get them to engage with the whys and why-nots.
  • Keep the conversation in the zone of curiosity, they can explore and express their thoughts around the issue safely and internalise experiences of talking about this sort of thing with you and you not freaking out.
    • It really looks like they are projecting an image of vaping as being something cool – what do you think?
    • Is that something that comes across in what you’re coming across with friends or among older kids at school?
    • How do you think it makes people look and feel? Cool, not cool?
    • Is being a rebel cool? Does it give people status?
    • Do you think some people get pressured to do this?
    • What do you know about how it’s supposed to affect you when you do it?
    • What do you think about the risks of vaping – what do you know about it?

• Take a non-judgmental approach and start with what they know first.
  • Don’t be a pouncing parent – if they tell you something about a peer venturing on the world of vapes, stay in questioning mode.
    • Lead with the whys, and the possibilities there…is there peer pressure? Is it about getting rebel status and being known? Is it about stress in school or family life?
    • What are the pluses and minuses for them?
    • How can they support their friend?
    • What could they do if they were asked to join in and try it?
    • Acknowledge that it is possible that they might be offered to join in vaping. And that it will be their decision in that moment. Obviously you don’t want them to try it – but this is the reality…
    • What if they don’t want to try it? What could they say that would give them an elegant exit?
    • What if they tried it and liked it? What do they know about the additional risks to underage vaping? (eg obtaining cheap, counterfeit, or black market products…)

All of these scaffolded conversations allow for you to drop in extra information in an age-appropriate way, or go into more depth depending on the level of curiosity and engagement your questions get…If you have their buy-in, and you attune to their readiness and appetite for the conversation, then you can be layering in ideas about nicotine as a drug, about addiction, about the commercial manipulation, about the economics of creating dependency in young people…

There’s one thing that most young people and teens really share – and that’s not wanting to be controlled and manipulated by others, to be the boss of their bodies, and the boss of their brains.

Children are social scientists, and there’s a very important window of influence pre-teen during which you can really earn and own that space of being the guide by the side. If you’ve been able to cover some of these sorts of scaffolded conversations from the safe and secure base position, you’ll be ready to graduate with them into the teen-world of respecting their autonomy, trusting their ability to make good choices, but being a ready and rick resource for them if they make bad ones – or if bad decisions are being made around them and they are unsettled.

Because let’s face it, whether or not our kids decide to vape or not to vape, to drink, or not to drink…those are decisions they will make without us being there. They will be decisions made in the pockets of free, private, independent time they will have. At sleepovers, parties, in the loos at school. Being practical, pragmatic, and respectful of this is to be realistic.

To be connected with them over these questions of risk and reward, hedonic and belonging-seeking impulsivity, is a gradual thing. It’s earned over time through the development of trust-based empathy.  When we ensure they have the information delivered in safe, manageable, values-led conversations with us, over time, means they have the chance to frame their approach in an informed, and identity-based way.

If we wait until they are a teen already, and trying to find their place within teen-world, when we come at them armed with all the scary facts, the risk of our disapproval overshadows the capacity to learn. We become less, rather than more approachable over the risky stuff that will become increasingly real in their lives.

When they know they belong and can connect with us as a reliable resource who is on their side, whether they do or don’t make mistakes, they feel safe. Their safety comes through our presence and connection, when they value that safety and want to preserve their connection to us, that is the factor that gives us traction and influence in their lives. This, more than the danger-briefing – is what will keep them safer.

How does this resonate with you? Observations, reflections, questions?

Contact me for coaching, parent talks, workshops: contact@emmagleadhill.com