PTA: Parent, Teacher, Asshole

Tips for Trips to Docs

LiveSmarter, "A blog for improving daily living through insights into health, wellness, finance, and education," has an article up about how to keep your children more relaxed and calm on doctor trips. 38 Tips to Keep Your Kids Entertained and Stress Free When Seeing a Doctor.

It's a great article for new parents going to the doctor's office or ER for the first time with their toddler. Having 5 children between 6 and 1, I'll admit a number of the suggestions, well, I rolled my eyes and thought, "Duh..." But I'm sure I wasn't as wellversed and some of the tips would have been helpful. Some of the good ideas include being prepared to entertain and feed your child. Especially important to unpredictable trips to the ER.

Interestingly enough, a number of the suggestions seem designed more for relaxing the parent than calming the child, but then that supports tips 28 and 29, "They can express emotion, you can't" and "Be Patient". The first three tips, lumped together as "Do Your Research", will be very helpful to calming first time parents, because there's nothing more stressful than taking your child into an unknown situation. Tips 11-13 are pretty clearly focused on keeping the parent calm, suggesting parents have their insurance information, being on time, and making a list of questions for the doctor. Tips 22-24 are good recommendations for parents to keep calm, "Learn How to Present your Child's Case," "Ask the Right Questions," and "Know the Medical History." Knowledge about your child and what may be his or her condition will help the doctor and help you stay calm. Also, the suggestiong to have your phone charger with you in Tip 18, "Bring Some "Just in Case" items is a good recommendation targetting keeping the parents stress-free...ish.

A warning about researching your child's condition: Despite all the information you can find online about any and every medical condition, most of us aren't doctors. Many conditions have similar symptoms and panicky parents my assume the worst, when it's nothing big. That will increase parent stress which won't help the child's stress level. And use the information to prepare youurself, not to tell the doctor what your child has. Don't go in saying, "My child has Blahblahtorisis and I need you to get him the hospital." Let the doctor do the doctoring and diagnosis. If it is Blahblahtorisis, then you'll have an idea what that means and you'll better be able to "Ask the Right Questions" as the tips recommend. If the doctor comes back with the horrid, "I'm not sure. I'm going to run some tests for Wahwahtorisis and Boobooleptia." Then feel free to ask him about Blahblahtorisis to see why it's not being tested for.

A Strong Recommendation from the List: Well Check-ups. Not only will yearly Well check-ups make sure your child is healthy, it will do more for familiarizing your child with the doctor's office than all the role playing and talking the two of you can do.

posted by Bodog @ 11:12 AM