Your prior point about bringing her to the local physician to give him a chance to put her at ease with the examination process is a valid one. As long as two things are true. 1) The girl goes into the process with an open mind about whether or not to allow an exam. 2) The girl truly believes that she is allowed to say no, without judgement, if she is ultimately not ok with the process.
What I fear is that the girl will feel pressured into allowing the discussion, will not be open minded about being reassured that it’s OK, and will still acquiesce even though she desperately doesn’t want it, because of all the trouble she’s being to everyone.
A teenager says they don’t want a throat swab, an immunization, a standard screening test, having their blood pressure measured (all these do happen, some several times each day) - should the parent say well if you don’t want it, that’s okay, because their asserting control over their own body should not be discouraged?
FWIW pediatric offices and the kids parents sometimes coerce kids to participate in things like that.
Frustrating that no one is answering my questions about where the line gets drawn.
Oh. We do have parents who do that by the way. They don’t want to traumatize the kid with a swab they are afraid of. And yeah an unwanted throat swab is much more invasive than a quick look at a “private area”.
How can you answer other than “yes, it’s your body and your choice”? We’re training our teenagers to be adults. If, after understanding the consequences of refusing treatment, a teenaged person says “no”, then they’re refusing treatment.
If the parents think the teenager is competent to make the choice, then the parents should respect the teenager’s choice. Talking the talk about being an adult, but not walking the walk of letting them be an adult, is not productive to anyone.
I’m not a parent so not sure if anyone wants to hear from me.
But I was a kid who was terrified of blood draws and threw a fit, all the way up to being a pre-teen. I remember being told once by a phlebotomist “if you don’t let us do it in your arm we’re going to do it in your thigh and it’s going to be so much worse.” I didn’t like it but I remember at that point that I let them do it. I had a choice between bad and worse and I understood and chose bad. They gave me a choice. It’s possible that there was no “taking it from your thigh” but however they handled it made a huge impact on me.
This kid seems to have a choice. I guess the parents had a choice to let her know whether or not she had a choice. Now the parents are mad at the choice she’s making.
I’d imagine for throat swabs or inoculations or blood draws the choice might be “do it like they ask, or do it strapped to a gurney” or “do it with me putting you in a choke hold” right?
Well, you’ve certainly validated my policy of not letting my teenagers be in a room with medical professionals without me, just in case they find it easy to coerce procedures.
In my case, at least, because we don’t have the details necessary to do so in this particular case. And it would have to be a case-by-case basis.
How expensive is this actually likely to get? We don’t know. How many visits are expected to be necessary? We don’t know. How much do the flute lessons cost? We don’t know. How often does the family eat out, and at what kind of restaurant? We don’t know. How much do they spend on family vacations, and how badly does anybody involved want to go on those vacations as opposed to cheaper ones or staycations? We don’t know. How much money do they spend on everybody’s clothes? We don’t know. Do the kids even want these music lessons? We don’t know. How much does the family spend on presents each year? On movies? On watching sports? On cars? What kind of cars are they driving, how many, how old are the vehicles, what is public transport like in the area? What is the state of the college accounts and the retirement accounts? We don’t know any of that. And how much of a shit does each family member give about what they are spending it on? That matters, too.
The only clear sense given by the article is that they could afford it, but not without giving up something else; and that the “something else” isn’t dinner, or being housed, or somebody else’s essential health needs. Whether the “something else” is drastic enough to be worth losing their daughter’s confidence over, I don’t know; but I don’t have enough information about either what they do spend on, or the importance to family members of the spending, to draw a line.
If you’re talking about the line purely for health reasons – the 14 year old isn’t refusing to have the exam. She’s not refusing to have the treatment. She’s not insisting on anything in practice medically unobtainable. She just wants a female doctor. I don’t see any equivalence at all in that to refusing a necessary medical treatment.
You’re probably not going to get much out of a throat swab from me, as a child or now, unless you tie me down. My gag reflex is not under my conscious control and it’s drastic. By the time I was old enough to remember I could hold my tongue out of the way for a visual throat exam, though – as long as you kept that tongue depressor away from me; because if you tried to use it you weren’t going to see a damn thing anyway. I flat out could not and can not control the reaction. – if you did tie me down you might get the thing contaminated with vomit.
I’ve had an exam for which they had to put a tube down my throat. They anaesthetised me. That worked.
Sorry I didn’t respond to the ‘should we sacrifice flute lessons’, thing, because the money part would not influence my choice to listen to my daughter and get her the caregiver she prefers. If it costs, I’ll pay. Because for me, money should not come into this. If I can afford flute lessons, pretty sure I can afford a different Dr. If it’s more dear, actually costly? I’ll pack a lunch, sacrifice something, but my child won’t be pressured into this over my finances.
If you’d, ‘find the money’ if she needed a specialist then you CAN afford it, you’re just using money to justify coercion, in my mind.
We also don’t know how important those quarterly medical exams really are, and whether there’s some way to have a woman do them in-network, and whether the child is afraid of being hurt or molested or just has an excess of personal modesty, and a whole host of other details that would matter if it were my child.
This speaks volumes to me. How is it possible you can imagine/believe it was only ever wonderful to the coached/coerced? As if none could ever have been traumatized or left feeling coerced? Because you haven’t heard back? Are you for real? Or maybe because you’ve never even considered it could be? Because you’re just that good a coach?
Yeah pretty basic technique. For parents too. From toddlers on up. We though put up the guardrails of the range of the choices and help guide them. They don’t get to choose whatever they want. (Digressing but it’s the classic authoritarian vs authoritative vs permissive parenting approach.)
It’s letting them know it needs to be done. For swabs I can have them practice the ah and make the deal (works on younger than teens) that if is worse than a quick gag they can slug me in the shoulder as hard as they like, which some then do. But if they won’t do the ah I need to do it blind and that cannot be as gentle. And sometimes we then just do it. I’ve not been thrown up on yet.
I’m specifically asking NOT about this case but hypothetically where your point would be to insist.
@elbows is infinite expense. No limit. And if the kid was squeamish about any doctor examine her then no care I guess.
I’ll provide a hypothetical specific. All the kids would have to give music lessons. Parents won’t have date nights. Fewer new clothes. Okay with that?
My daughter felt coerced once as a teen who needed an immunization. And she’s still a little bitter about how it was done. (We weren’t there at the time, and learned about this later.) But she certainly didn’t describe her reaction as “and I’m still traumatized by this.” And she’s okay with necessary medical care today. And she doesn’t regret getting that shot, just the way it was done.
These things aren’t black and white, horrible or completely benign.
Why yes I am. Frankly my view of your stated parenting approach is that such would be being permissive to a negligent degree, an abrogation of parenting responsibility. My understanding of teens is that they are not fragile snowflakes and not typically psychologically scarred because they were forced to get a shot at 16 that they were afraid of, or a throat swab that they didn’t want. Or have to have the degree of pubic hair they have assessed by a doctor of another gender.
I’m going to make some reasonable guess specifics here to fill in the hypothetical for discussion sake. The condition that best fits the age and need for close monitoring including evaluation of secondary sexual characteristics like pubic hair and breast development is a form of hypogonadism. The two classes are hypergonadotropic hypogonadism (the problem is at the ovary level, such as in Turner Syndrome), and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (the problem is at the brain level, such as Kallman syndrome). All treatable with carefully monitored and regularly adjusted intervention over a couple of years and then less often monitoring needed. The presenting problem is usually delayed puberty and treatment often starts at 13 to 14. It fits.
Going out of network costs of course depend on the plan, what deductibles are, any max cap, but between visits and testing and given a reasonable plan, I’d WAG easily 5 to 10K over the two years.
Median household income is about 80K. Use that. And like many right now our hypothetical family is feeling economically a bit anxious. They are trying to be disciplined about saving for the kids’ college needs and the retirement plans but it is hard. Not quite putting in as much as they know they should. They are not living extravagantly but not paycheck to paycheck. They have budgeted to be able to afford the kids music lessons, and an occasional night out. Sounds like three kids, so music lessons likely add up to $500/m at least. But they feel it is important. They worry about the price of eggs and gas. Pretty average middle class family.
For that specific hypothetical where should the 5 to 10 K come from so that the child doesn’t have suffer the trauma of a male physician evaluating the state of their breast and pubic hair development every month or so?
Pretend it is half that. What should be cut out?
In neither case is food on the table or roof over the heads at risk.
For that hypothetical specific but fairly average family circumstance is there an amount greater that would trigger you to tell the kid that there is not a choice, this is the care we can afford and you need this care?
I find that a very strange way to view the alternative. I never saw telling my child that something they wanted was too expensive for us as having been a cause for them to lose confidence in us.
Interesting. So if you had a high fever with a sore throat, and you went in to a provider, would you refuse testing? Just go without medication? Demand antibiotics without the swab? Or try to suck it up and be Ah some.
This statement, or something similar, has been repeated in this thread so many times that it is taking on a life of its own.
I think @MandaJo is probably right that the question is made up, but also agree with @DSeid that it is a worthwhile matter to discuss anyway. So let’s do it based on the scenario presented. The parent stated:
I do not want to lessen our contributions to retirement accounts, college funds, and other savings. My daughters (I have two other teens) do one non-school-sponsored extracurricular (music lessons, dance classes, etc.). I do not want this to impact my other girls,
So the fact the daughter might have to give up flute lessons is NOT the only thing going on here. Her siblings may have reduced opportunities as well, not just her. And the parents’ finances and long-term financial planning may be affected.
I went way out on a limb with my daughter and her dental care. Her senior year(age 16)she needed her wisdom teeth out.
She pitched a fit when it was explained to her. And said “no” alot and loudly. To the dentist. The whole office and us.
We all told her “You’ll be sorry”.
Sure enough. The two bottom ones blew up on winter break. The winter break that was her Senior trip week.
Well, she missed that.
I called the dentist they were booked solid, because school was out.
He recommended a so-called painfree dental office. In Little Rock. It was a drive. And we knew we have to go at least a few times. We called them only because she was in so much pain. Swollen.
They got her in. He says the same thing. They gotta come out.
She lost her shit. I never saw a toddler have such a melt down.
They were very understanding.
They had the dental assistant talk to her. She promised her everything my daughter wanted to hear:
She wouldn’t be awake.
It wouldn’t change her face or affect her eating after healing.
She would go home with pain meds.
An icecream cone.
A toy from the toy box.
That made my daughter laugh.
This assistant diffused the whole situation with words.
I never saw anything like it before.
The Lil’wrekker got through all 4. We had some set backs. It wasn’t so bad.
To hear her tell it, now up in her 20s, it was the most awful thing she’s ever experienced. And “Oh, I’m so traumatized from previous dental work”
She tells it to every one who’ll listen.
She wasn’t truly traumatized, she was completely asleep.
It didn’t cost anymore at this dental practice. Insurance covered it great.
Just the trips there.
I do not want this to impact my other girls, and it feels unfair to ask Kim to choose between flute lessons or a female doctor
I don’t know if the letter is fake or if the writer is just unclear, but saying it doesn’t seem fair to make her choose certainly makes it seem that the choice is a possibility. Why say it’s not fair if it wouldn’t make it possible?
.
And indeed many here misunderstood that to mean that such would be enough to cover the cost. The context of the complete quote makes that clear that it would not. It would be a start as it is a discretionary expense.
Willing to comment on the specific hypothetical I presented though?