dilemma - do i let dp's dad smoke in the house?

[laligo]

dp's dad is coming to stay for a weekend to meet his new grandson... and he smokes like a train (pipe and cigars). our normal rule is no smoking in the house - dp (a v. light smoker) smokes in the garden and so do guests.

BUT grandpa is 70 and frail (has cancer) and one of his few joys is to sit in a cosy armchair for hours smoking himself to a kipper. he has also been very financially generous to us (helped us buy a house) and to DS, and i also love him dearly. i would feel like a right meanie chucking him outside, esp if freezing cold and raining/blowing a gale as it has been recently.

on the other hand i'm paranoid about SIDS and really don't want 4-month-old DS around smoke.

any ideas?

zippi, dp's fag is late at night when ds is asleep and he doesn't interact with him until the morning. and if i could put a stop to the one a day i would - but i know my dp. he will stop one day when he's ready, but he won't do it because i tell him to. i just try to be thankful he smokes so little and isn't as bad as his dad.

i also am not sure about fil smoking in his bedroom - the spare room is my study! by the open back door is a good one.

I think your approach is the right one, explaining your reservations and balancing it all out.

laligo, i completely sympathise with your dilemma, as my fil is a pipe smoker and I have a no smoking at home policy (dd is 6 months old). The thing I find interesting (!), is that he would rather not visit us, than have to do without his pipe. I read it as pure selfishness on his part, but perhaps I'm being harsh. Mind you, this was the same man who, when I went to stay with them when I was pg last year, blew pipe smoke in my face for a few hours before dinner and lunch every day without a care in the world. .
I would ask him to do without for the few days, or else perhaps he can have a bonding boys fag in the garden with his son every so often.....

orangina, when fil and mil visited together last christmas, i was pregnant and he smoked, but i stayed out of the room. i talked to dp about it and we agreed it was fair since it was the middle of winter, but i said to fil that once the baby was born we wouldn't want smoking in the house. thing is i said it in an "in passing" kind of way, and he will have forgotten. i reminded dp about it recently and he had forgotten.

i need to be more assertive - i just find it hard and equate it with "not being nice".

Can't your dp tell your fil? Why is this becoming your sole responsibility? Ds is dp's concern too, and it might be only fair that dp tells his pa about the outside smokies....

If you are worried about not being nice, then just say it very nicely, perhaps in such a way that you KNOW he wasn't planning on smoking anyway (!), but just wanted to make sure he was ok. Worth a try? (Though I'm still all for dp doing the actual telling.... you need his support through this I think...)

left to his own devices, dp would be for the compromise. he wouldn't let fil smoke with babe in his lap, but otherwise he'd be relaxed about it. he thinks it is a negligible risk and nothing to worry about. we are very different personalities - i worry about ANY risk. dp is ok to go with what i want, but that makes it down to me to sort it out.

however, since i'm having so much trouble with it, i will ask him if he'll talk to his dad or at least us both do it together.

That sounds like a good idea. I think it will make you feel better if you are not being cast as the neurotic mother! Which I don't think you are, by the way

by the way thanks everyone for the posts so far - has really helped me think it over.

Message withdrawn

spot on socci

Which is the lesser of two evils then?
Fags in the house or.............
a bottle of formula???

no dilemma there moondog
formula-free zone
and i will not shirk from waving my norks at fil, so at least there's something i'm prepared to be militant about.

Well f**k me backwards..me too!
I think formula versus the one off fag is a no brainer,don't you???

YOu have to be joking. Since when did formula cause cancer?

i think the suggest there is some tongue-in-cheek going on gobbledispook

Errrrrm at the risk of starting another ding dong,research suggests that by b/feeding a woman reduces her risk of breast cancer by 25%.

I leave you to draw your own conclusions re formula causing cancer.......

Laligo - my father was a really heavy and committed smoker, but he didn't smoke in our house once we had kids - he never even raised the subject, however he visited, never stayed with us. Just maybe, dp's dad won't want to smoke with his dg about.

Like you, I would want to find some sort of compromise.

lol at 'committed smoker' (and apologies if inappropriate)