To wonder if passive smoking was the reason I was so rubbish at PE

[Comedycook]

So I am a child of the 1980s. I always thought passive smoking had had no effect on me but recently I've been thinking and I'm not so sure.

So my parents both smoked throughout my childhood. Pretty sure my mum smoked during her pregnancy. They always smoked indoors and in the car...no windows open.

Anyway, I've always been crap at PE...now I know there are many factors which could affect that. But I'm talking from a really young age where I can't see any significant difference between myself and my peers. I remember being 4 years old in the playground and any type of running race or game being last and last by a long way every single time. Now I wasn't a fat child at all. I was thin throughout my primary school years...I also wasn't particularly sedentary compared to the other kids. I did swimming and ballet and all the usual stuff. Nor did I have an unhealthy diet. So why was I constantly so awful at running and last every time? Was thinking to myself maybe it was down to the passive smoking?. I also suffer greatly from any cold or respiratory virus...it always takes me a long time to recover.

Anyway, I'm not especially traumatized or upset by any of this ..I'm literally just wondering... anyone have any thoughts?

It's more likely that, as smokers, you had non sporty parents who didn't really run around with you as much as some of the healthier families. If it was second hand smoke, you would have noticed specific breathing issues.

Yes, thank you! I'm not upset or distraught about it. Just wondering

Erm we aren't all the same I was rubbish at p.e hated it my siblings were great at it nothing to do with passive smoking all to do with we are all different

Which bit?? I was actually wondering if English is not your first language. Doesn't matter though.

I mean I doubt I'd have won any Olympic medals regardless...but I do wonder if my utter crapness was made even more crap by the passive smoking. And I'm not talking specifically about sports...I have a very clear memory of myself in infant school, playing tag and not being able to keep up with the running around like the other kids.

There is no way of knowing without a medical history, but if you're determined to blame your parents we can't stop you.

Did you have asthma ?
I could under stand that if you had asthma passive smoking would have Bern a large contributing factor affecting your sporting prowess,but the f not as others said maybe you were just not athletic and memory trends to be hazy ,tere may well have been other kids Who struggled with sport .

if you're determined to blame your parents we can't stop you

This is a very odd phrase. Passive smoking is not a myth and both my parents smoked. Blame is irrelevant. I was passive smoking for two decades. That's a fact...not an opinion. I'm wondering if it had an effect on me and what that was.

But there will loads of kids whose parents didn't smoke who had the same experience.

I personally think it's a bit odd that you seem so determined to find your parents at fault for this, rather than just accepting you were a bit crap at PE.

I think the interesting thing here is how we can attribute things in our life that haven't gone as we wish to factors which have a very tenuous plausible impact on those things.

I see it in a work context where patients attribute their chaotic lives to things that happened long after they started drinking or using drugs. I also have a friend who hasn't worked since her children were born because she attributes certain aspects of her childhood (frugality, extreme healthy eating as a family) to the fact that her mother worked, when in reality these things are just aspects of her mother's personality. I see people on Mumsnet attributing lifelong feelings of social alienation to the fact that their parents couldn't afford or didn't arrange extracurricular activities.

In every case I think ""Eh, that doesn't seem likely..." but it seems to be something the human mind does.

Well not really because passive smoking does affect people.

You can't say that passive smoking is bad and causes health problems...then when someone says I think I have suffered from the effects of passive smoking, say they are talking rubbish.

This is what i mean about spurious plausability. Passive smoking can have a slow cumulative impact over a lifetime, or in the case of someone with asthma it could exacerbate the condition so that a child was unable to participate in exercise. But there is no reason to think it makes an otherwise healthy child run much more slowly than their peers (most of whom would also have lived with smokers in any case).

But once an idea takes root, it is very difficult to dislodge. To this day my neighbour believes a miscarriage she had was caused by her eating cheesecake, and she is angry because nobody told her to avoid soft cheese. It doesn't matter how many people explain that the two things are really not related - she has latched onto that explanation and I suppose it is easier to have a specific cause to blame and be angry about than to accept that sometimes things don't work out as you wish.

This is a very odd phrase. Passive smoking is not a myth and both my parents smoked. Blame is irrelevant. I was passive smoking for two decades. That's a fact...not an opinion. I'm wondering if it had an effect on me and what that was.

Fair enough. I wonder the same, and include my limited diet in that as well as the passive smoking. But I don't get many colds as an adult and was a county level athlete as a child/teenager, but is it still possible to impact much later, decades on.

I strongly suspect my untreated asthma as a child (my parents don't 'believe' in conventional healthcare) was the reason I was shit at pe.

passive smoking causes a similar inflammatory response, so yes it's likely it affected the op as child.

Only if the Op had asthma.

Passive smoking definitely has an impact on your aerobic activity, as does air quality around your home and locale.

Then 1 in 5 people have a congenital heart dysfunction; that may not always be dangerous in itself, but will certainly compromise your aerobic activity.

Finally girls around the menarche are very prone to anaemia.

So it’s highly possible a combination of these is why you could not run fast.

Both my DH and I suffered from living with smokers (his home was small and I don't know how he could breathe there at all) plus wherever you went you couldn't get away from it.

We were both very sporty at school, so no I don't think that's the reason at all

I don't think there's necessarily a connection. My parents were both heavy smokers (my Dad smoked a pipe and my mother 40+ cigarettes a day). The windows in our house and car were rarely open.

My Dad was actually a PE teacher in the early years of his working life and smoked throughout. He then became a headteacher and was more desk bound, still smoking. He was very good at physical activity and good at sport.

My mother was also a teacher but not PE. She had hated PE when she was at school and wasn't good at it, except for tennis. That was before she took up smoking at around 18. She is now 88!!

She smoked heavily for well over 60 years including throughout her two pregnancies (me in 1966 and my sister in 1969). She only recently gave up smoking (begrudgingly at first) when a severe bout of pneumonia almost killed her last Christmas. She now uses nicotine patches and she vapes. She has not had a cigarette for almost a year now and I find it so much easier to be in the same room as her now. I know vapes are quite controversial too, but I'll take her vaping any day over the dense cloud of smoke that used to follow her around. Her own COPD seems much better too since the cigarettes went.

I do very much regret that I was forced into passive smoking for the first 20 years of my life, although I didn't question it at the time as it was just normal to me. I do occasionally wonder if it has contributed to my propensity towards chest infections as an adult so I do kind of see where you are coming from. However, I still love my mother dearly and see no point in looking backwards too much. The past cannot be undone.

I've mused very occasionally on what you have said, but don't really see a definite connection.

Both DH parents were heavy smokers, he was fab as a child at PE and as a teenager was only beaten in running by lad who was a smoker himself.
Some people are just better at running than others, you would have been a little better probably with no passive smoking but not hugely so.

I work in a primary school, the children who smell of smoke are generally no slower than those who don't (and sometimes the most active), although possibly not reaching their full potential (impossible to know but likely).

Whilst it definately wont have helped i suspect its more a mix of lots of things

Parents general attitude to sport
Parents smoking
Parents genes
Your general health
Your diet
The school
Your mental state
Etc etc etc

Lets put it this way, my mother smoked through her pregnancy with me and my 2 brothers. I had to escape to my own bedroom to ever escape smoking in my home and i was the same child as you who went to school smelling of fags and sat in the back of the car struggling to breathe.

I was always top 2 or 3 runners in my school year in cross country, represented county etc at multiple sports. Brother was one of the fastest cross country runners in the country for his age all the way up to 15 when he discovered drink and fags. He had trials at a few prof football teams too. My dad smoked most of his life but he was natural at nearly every sport he did and to very high levels.

It definitely didnt help you but i suspect it was a multitude of factors that would actually result in a child struggling in sport purely down to the passive smoking.

I should have added to my post (too late for the edit facility now) that I was dreadful at school PE and loathed it. I just wasn't coordinated enough, it simply wasn't for me and the teaching was diabolical. My sister was better but still not overly enthusiastic about it.

Some people are slow runners for no particular reason. I can think of three or four kids I know who aren't overweight and are fairly sporty but are just very slow.

I was at school in the 70s/80s. I was good at swimming and hockey. Average at other sports. My parents both smoked about 40 a day. I was no better or worse than other kids at my school at exercise.

This got me thinking. I'm a child of the 50s/60s. My dad was very athletic despite being a smoker and my mum smoked too, including during pregnancy. We shared a large Edwardian house for the first 10 years of my life with my aunt and uncle, heavy smokers and my GPs, also smokers. The house was literally yellow with smoke. My mum washed the nets weekly and the water would be brown. I was always poorly with chest infections as a child and was pretty crap at PE.
I'm in my 60s now and, touch wood, in good health but as a teenager I used to say to my parents if I died of lung cancer etc it would be their fault😱

I have a theory that my heart is small for my body size, is a reason why I don't have much speed or strength. Could that have happened due to mom smoking constantly thru pregnancy with me? I was 2 weeks overdue & about 6 lbs 8oz, though mom was a short person anyway.