You were probably as shocked as I was when you heard or saw coverage of the toddler in Indonesia who smokes around 40 cigarettes a day!  Yes this child is only 2 years old and smokes this much and according to his father, throws a tantrum if he is not given a cigarette to smoke.  As a parent, I find it really hard to imagine such a young child smoking that much per day – this is just outrageous!

I don’t know about you and whether you can recall what you did, what you ate or drank when you were two years old – I most certainly can’t.  However, I remember one afternoon when I was around 5 an incident when one of my cousins rolled up paper, lit it up and then pranced around trying to look cool and pretending to smoke.  I remember this because I was the tell-tale that told on him which got my cousin in a whole lot of trouble.  I can’t imagine what it might have been like if he had been caught smoking a real cigarette though.

There was a lot of outrage (not just mine) about this toddler in Indonesia which makes me wonder… is the childhood obesity epidemic in the US any better?  Are children dying here in terms of our infant mortality rate where the US ranks next to last among 30 industrialized countries something we should be proud of?  Why isn’t there more of an outrage about children dying and childhood obesity?

I have to admit that I do not know the kind of life this child in Indonesia lives but as pundits all over the world dish out criticisms, point fingers, say who is at fault and who should be jailed, I think we need to take a closer look at the future of our own children right here in the land of the free.

I do not condone a child smoking, but before we allow our outrage to spill over to countries overseas we should first look at how we do things in our own country, ask ourselves if we as a country prioritize our children’s health and well-being in policies and funding, and look at how we do things in our own backyard and in our own homes before we point fingers at others. As a wise man once reminded us, we shouldn’t look for specks of sawdust in others’ eyes, when there is a plank in our own.