Video of him plopped on a brightly-colored toy truck inhaling deeply and happily blowing smoke rings had circulated on the Internet last week, turning him into a local celebrity.
As we spoke to his mother, a crowd gathered and a man taunted Aldi with a cigarette, blowing smoke in his direction.
"Smoking has been a part of our culture for so long it isn't perceived as being hazardous, as causing illness, as poisonous," said Seto Mulyadi, chairman of Indonesia's National Commission for Child Protection. "A lot of adults who are around children will smoke. They will carry a baby in one hand and a cigarette in another. Even mothers don't understand that they are poisoning their children."
Mulyadi met with Aldi in Jakarta, where his mother brought him for help. He said Aldi was a bright boy, quicker than most children his age.
He also said Aldi was a victim of his environment.
Mulyadi told Diana that she needed to find other things to occupy the boy's time.
But he told us what was disturbing was that the parents motivation to get Aldi to quit wasn't stemming primarily from an understanding of the risk to his health, but more from the cost of spending four dollars a day -- Aldi smokes an average of 40 cigarettes daily.
"Well, I don't want to give him cigarettes, but what I am I supposed to do? I am confused," his mother said. "I didn't let him smoke, I even forbade him from smoking, but I was trying to stop him from getting sick."
