While we were on holiday last week Ellie left Gemma and I shocked.

We were sitting down waiting to have some lunch, Ellie was finishing off a lollipop. She started messing around with it, and after a few moments Gemma and I suddenly stopped and looked at her.

Ellie was holding the lollipop upside down, holding it like a cigarette, and sucking on it. “Look, I’m smoking,” she said.

We were absolutely stunned!!

When we asked Ellie where she had heard that she began talking about other things. She went all quiet as though we were telling her off. We tried to reassure her that she wasn’t in trouble, but she stayed quiet. It was left like that, as at this age we didn’t want to make a big issue out of it. We are hoping that this is a one-off occurrence.

We can’t really know where she has picked it up from. The most obvious place she’d pick that sort of thing up would be from us, her parents, but neither Gemma or I smoke, neither do our families. My Dad used to have the occasional cigar, but never in front of the kids. So we began racking our brains where she could have picked it up from.

We came up with two options:

Television - this could be where she’s picked it up from, but you don’t see too many people smoking on the TV nowadays. Ironically, the one thing that did pop into my head where she may have picked up on this is the Anti-Smoking advert where they show the children copying everything that their parents are doing.

Our Neighbours – Out of the two sets of neighbours, three of the adults smoke. On one side of us the neighbours don’t smoke in the house, so come out into their back garden to have their fix of nicotine. Ellie is quite often in the garden playing, mainly bouncing on her trampoline, so she can easily see over the fence. And she also goes around there to play with the little girl.

I think the second option is the more likely place where she has picked it up from. I am not blaming our neighbours for this as they are entitled to do whatever they want in their own home.

Ellie is a really intelligent child and takes notice of everything around her, she is naturally inquisitive. It just goes to show that children, no matter how old they are, are going to pick up on everything that goes on around them in their world.

I think that this is a little warning for the future that even the smallest, obscure things are going to be noted and Gemma and I will probably have some explaining to do. What we don’t want to do is to make a big deal out of everything at this stage in her life. She will know doubt pick up on this and want to know more if we go on about it, and reinforce it in her mind.

Children are so very, very impressionable at this age.