Sitting in our family doctor's waiting room one day, my son Wes, then about 13, calmly announced that he wanted to "go in there alone." This option hadn't occurred to me, but I didn't have much time to think: the nurse was calling his name. "Mmmm, OK," was all I could muster, and as Wes disappeared down the corridor, I watched with that curious mother-mix of pride, longing and anxiety.
When he returned, he hissed, "Let's go!" and scooted out to the car. Once inside he announced in a dramatic stage whisper, "He felt my balls!" His brother, 11, shuddered theatrically. For a brief flash I thought he'd been molested – then quickly grasped that he was referring to part of a checkup for an adolescent boy.
Wes, who had known the doctor for years and felt comfortable with him, was undisturbed and somewhat proud to have passed another milestone. But I didn't feel very proud. Certainly I'd made the right first step in helping him establish his own good health-care practices by taking him for regular checkups. But I felt I'd sent him into a new situation without any preparation at all, that I should have told him what to expect, what questions to ask, what rights he had.
Ready or not?
Kids are probably ready to go into the examining room alone around age 12 or 13, when puberty starts. That's also when they're beginning to make lifestyle choices and assume some responsibility for aspects of their own health such as diet and exercise, says Ginette Gilbert- Rasuli, a nurse practitioner (NP) in primary health care at University of Ottawa Health Services, who spent a year working part time with students in grades nine to 12 at a primary healthcare clinic in a school in Ottawa.
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