What can adults do | What can psychologist do
The teenage period is a difficult time in itself, and it is especially difficult for a person with diabetes: a surge of hormones, a desire to understand your future, argue with adults and affirm their positions and views. Complicating matters is the beginning interest in the opposite sex, and difficult relationships with peers, and the need to keep up with studies. All these are normal problems of growing up.
Adults are seriously worried if their “child” indulges: does not measure blood glucose, does not inject insulin for snacking, or, on the contrary, administers insulin and forgets to eat, goes to football, does not keep a diary, answers aggressively to reminders and care, screams, gets angry and locked in his room. Fear of possible complications exacerbates unrest.
What can adults do for their child
It is important that you have contact with your growing child. If you can talk, if your son or daughter can come to you and complain, talk, consult, if you know how to listen and accept the experiences of an adult, it is much easier for him to survive this difficult period of his life.
It is important to treat your child as a person, and not as a “baby”, a “child” whom they raised, who were taught to wipe their ass, into which they entered without knocking. After all, he becomes an adult, a separate person who must be respected.
If there is no communication, if you live like neighbors or enemies, if you have never talked heart to heart, if a teenager does not trust you and does not share his life, it is bitter and painful. And that means it’s time to do something.
How will a psychologist help
A psychologist will help a person express their fears, doubts, their many and incomprehensible emotions and feelings. Feelings about diabetes, about changing and such an incomprehensible life, feelings about communication and conflicts with peers that so often happen at this age. The psychological impact can be discerned using special techniques – conversation, play, drawing, movement.
The psychologist will help the teenager to learn independently, outside the home, to cope with the difficulties that may arise in his daily life: how to answer tricky questions of classmates about his illness, how to talk with teachers and not be afraid to defend his need, for example, to go to the toilet during a lesson or eat when sugar has fallen, how not to feel like an outcast, but to live a confident, full-fledged life.
A psychologist will help a teenager deal with his feelings, thoughts, emotions, understand his parents, get closer to them, relieve aggression and negativity.
A psychologist will help a teenager become more adult and independent, which means that he will be responsible for his health and life.