Corinna Kuhnke's 2-year-old son smokes

Parents are always teaching their children. One of the most powerful ways that parents teach their children is by example. Kids watch their parents and they learn. They adopt their behavior.

Unfortunately, Corinna Kuhnke's 2-year-old little boy has picked up some bad habits from his mother.

GREENFIELD -- A mom has been ticketed for letting her 2-year-old son smoke.

According to a police report, customers and staff at the Ponderosa restaurant on S. 76th Street in Greenfield saw the woman and her aunt give the child a cigarette.

Corinna Kuhnke says her son was not in danger. "I had a pack of cigarettes on the table at a restaurant and the kid picked up a pack of cigarettes. He picked up the pack of cigarettes and pulled it out," she said.

She denies that her aunt lit the cigarette, saying instead, "she lit a lighter but she didn't light the cigarette."

Other witnesses say the cigarette was in the boy's mouth and it was smoking.

According to police, Kuhnke's aunt says Kuhnke bragged to her that her son can "even light his own cigarette."

Not true, says the mother. She says she's not to blame. "I wasn't at the table when it happened, for one. And the kid's 2-years-old. A lot of 2-year-old kids know how to do a lot of things," she told Lauren Leamanczyk.

Other disturbing details in the report include a family member telling police that Kuhnke keeps a rolled up dollar bill in her bedroom. When the boy sees a bill, he says "fix, fix."

The women are not being criminally charged. They have been cited for Providing Tobacco to Underage Persons.

This little boy was not blessed with a good mother.

She rationalizes, "[T]he kid's 2-years-old. A lot of 2-year-old kids know how to do a lot of things."

What an idiotic thing to say!

No 2-year-old should be handling cigarettes or a lighter.

There's nothing remotely cute about it. If the mother and aunt have no qualms about allowing the little guy to do that in public, I don't want to imagine what they allow him to do when no one is watching.

The mother and the aunt were ticketed. What good is that going to do?

Maybe the negative publicity and the humiliation will prompt Kuhnke to clean up her act and become a responsible parent.

That would be nice, but I don't see that happening.