Medical adviser Gill Yaz gives some practical advice for parents and teenagers
Personal continence management is an area that parents and carers should address as early as possible, believes ASBAH’s continence adviser Gill Yaz.
Encouraging young children to become involved from an early age makes personal continence care a part of their life so they become used to the idea of taking complete control in their teen years.
“It’s important not to expect a teenager to suddenly take complete responsibility,” Gill said. “If possible don’t leave it until the transition years because it is much harder for a young person because they don’t feel ownership.
“It’s very easy to fall into the trap of saying, you should be doing this for yourself by now, but that just creates another area of conflict.
“The teenage years are difficult enough because there is already so much to contend with, working out who you are and where you fit in.
“If you have a disability then you have additional things to think about and come to terms with. Many of the teenagers I’ve worked with feel that everyone is suddenly piling responsibilities on to their shoulders.”
Parents and carers should feel free to approach professionals including ASBAH advisers, GPs, paediatricians and urologists, for information and advice on continence issues and sex, an area which Gill says has been neglected until recently.
But she added that teenagers won’t cooperate unless they want to, and parents and carers simply have to accept that they aren’t ready for that message at that time.
She said: “We can talk for hours about the importance of cleanliness and self catheterising regularly to prevent kidney infections which can lead to kidney failure but sometimes the young person won’t take it on board. Teenagers rarely have any sense of their own mortality. Nagging often makes things feel worse for everybody, and doesn’t really work. Getting different people to repeat the ‘nag’ message also doesn’t work!
“It’s often useful to ask the young person what the problems are. The usual comments are that it is time-consuming, boring and prevents them from doing what they’d rather be doing, be that watching TV or hanging out with their friends, particularly during school breaks and lunch hours.
“Acknowledging that you understand can help. Sometimes making practical changes to the routine can speed up the process, making it less of a chore.
Sometimes they may be using inappropriate equipment and asking the Continence Nurse if the catheter size is still correct, for example, can help.”
When you do have appointments with healthcare professionals plan out what questions you’d like them to answer beforehand.
And you need to be honest about what you want and what you are prepared to do yourself. That way everyone can work to accommodate the young person’s needs.
