Dr. Héctor Pedicino presents “Stories of a Pediatrician”, a book that brings together his columns for various media with anecdotes from his experience in medicine.
The book was edited by Editorial Babel and will be presented this August 24, at 7:30 p.m., at the Sociedad Argentina de Pediatría Córdoba, located at 643 Corrientes Street.
A fragment:
teenagers
-I told you you don’t have to smoke! Now I tell your dad and you’ll see! She sounded like a rumble that afternoon as her mother discovered the smell of cigarette smoke on her teenage son’s clothing.
As in an ordinary trial, the dispute was raised to a higher instance.
I imagined this situation when Alejandro’s mother consulted me about the cough that bothered her. The 14-year-old boy looks at me and in his eyes you can see the vestiges of the boy I know, but with new lights and shadows.
“True, Doctor, you shouldn’t smoke,” says the mother, trying to reinforce and seek support for her preaching.
-Of course, smoking is very harmful to your health, imagine with all the years you have left to live, the time the cigarette has to harm you- I answer the mother, but directing the words to Ale.
Teenagers have the characteristic of challenging us, of criticizing the authority of their parents, of being rebellious. Society is in charge of offering them infinite temptations, drugs, alcohol, risk of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies just to name a few.
Following the flight of my imagination, I sense the arrival at dusk of the father, tired and often oblivious to the upbringing.
-You have to talk to Alejandro, that boy seems to be smoking. The mother receives him as soon as she closes the street door.
– I’m talking, tell him to come- He responds angrily, perhaps surprised to discover that the problems of now are more important than having broken the glass of the neighbor’s window when he scored the goal of the match between friends.
I see them face to face looking for a way to start talking, as if they were two strangers.
-You don’t know that cigarettes cause cancer, look at your uncle who died young because he smoked all day.
And with phrases like that, close the monologue with: “I forbid you to continue doing them”.
There were no answers. There were no questions. There was no dialogue.
Maybe the message didn’t go deep enough. It sounded more like an order.
By changing the object of the discussion, the scene can be repeated in each family.
Parents must know that dialogue with a teenager begins with the look and caress of a baby. With the story read before going to sleep and with the shared game. We must precede today’s talks with thousands of kisses and presences in the past.
So our words will be more credible and close.
Today’s dialogue began a long time ago.