Episode 235: Is Nicotine Really a Big Deal?
Feeding The Mouth That Bites You: Parenting Teens Into Adulthood
Kenneth Wilgus, Cynthia Yanof
4.8 • 801 Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Cynthia and Dr. Ken respond to a listener question many parents are facing: how to handle nicotine use with adolescents. The situation raises important questions about legality, respect, boundaries, and how parental authority shifts as kids grow older.
Dr. Ken offers perspective on how nicotine use differs from alcohol and marijuana, why not all “bad choices” carry the same level of risk, and how parents can respond without overreacting or minimizing the issue. They discuss why consequences still matter, how those consequences should change as kids mature, and what it looks like to set clear household standards without turning the conversation into a power struggle.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to Feeding the Mouth to Bight You, a weekly podcast guide on parenting teens and launching them into the world. |
| 0:15.3 | I'm Cynthia Yanov, and as always, I'm joined by psychologist and author Dr. Ken Wilgus. |
| 0:20.8 | Hello, Dr. Ken. |
| 0:22.0 | Cynthia. |
| 0:22.9 | How are you? |
| 0:23.9 | Good. |
| 0:24.7 | Hey, you called me the other night at like 9.30 at night. |
| 0:28.1 | And I was like, this is high alert because one, you never really call me, but surely not at 930 at night. |
| 0:35.3 | Yeah. |
| 0:35.8 | Oh, yeah. |
| 0:36.3 | That's right. |
| 0:37.0 | I was a little alarmed. I think it's the perfect segue into where we're headed with today's show. You're right. It is. And so you call and I don't remember what was happening, but I was like, I'm going to take this call. And so you're like, have you listen to the podcast? And I was like, no. I was like, well, no, not really, but I mean, |
| 0:56.4 | I was there when we taped it and I know it's been edited. And you're like, the ads. And so let me |
| 1:01.7 | interrupt this story to say, if you haven't noticed, we've placed some ads. We're allowing some |
| 1:06.9 | ads that we put on the podcast in order to cover some of the cost of hosting this podcast. |
| 1:12.3 | And I don't mean paying me or Dr. Ken, but just the price to have a podcast and edit and all of that. |
| 1:18.2 | Right. |
| 1:18.5 | So it was our first week to have ads. And as we were going into this process, Dr. Ken said, you know, |
| 1:24.4 | I would just want to make sure that we never have ads that relate to. |
| 1:28.6 | What are the two things? You say them. |
| 1:30.5 | I don't want anything that's sort of counseling related because, you know, I don't know who they are |
| 1:36.0 | and all that kind of stuff. And then obviously I don't want alcohol or drugs or, you know, |
... |
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