Respectful Interaction

Chapter Fifteen: Respectful Interaction: Working with Children and Adolescents
This week’s experience in the clinic motivated me to reflect on the young adolescent issues experiencing health problems. People tend not to think about these problems much because most of the young adolescents have a good health unless there is some pre-existing condition, systemic or inherited disease. The authors also reiterate that “Adolescence was often viewed as a relatively healthy time in person’s life” (293). It was unusual to see in the clinic thirteen year old with buckling knee problem, which could be more common problem of the older adult. The young physically active patient was treated from the knee weakness after his knee buckled during the soccer
game and he strained his calf.
This chapter of the book is a good source of reference on child and adolescent developmental changes and issues evolving from these changes. Depending on the problems the therapist needs to take into consideration the specific age aspects and be very attentive to illness circumstances since these patients can “find themselves halted in their progression of adulthood”(292). The authors find “autonomy and effective relatedness” as the key to respectful interaction with the young adolescents (294).
The patient, he was one of the first patients I have seen on the first day of my clinical affiliation, was assigned to quad exercise program and my question to CI was why would healthy and physically active basketball and soccer player would have buckling knees and such a plan of care.
She referred to notes and said that the PT suspected weak hips and altered biomechanics that can cause the knee problems. My concern was that the boy looked very quiet and listless still complaining of weakness and pain in knees. One of the reasons he could experience the frustration, is the break of regular schedule caused by the illness. The authors state that it can “have devastating consequences socially” (285). We do not have to forget what kind of difficulties kids are going through in a teenage age and how much they are “concerned with fitting in with their peers”(290). We have to take into count that every average teenager experiences changes in their mood and the character due to hormonal changes, the ones that are called difficult age, or the break of personality. In this case the loss of “autonomy” and the loss of “self” are devastating and can negatively affect the treatment (290). To my mind, even if the young adolescent may need help he may not ask for it because of the willingness to have self-identity and autonomy that affects their action. They may not say important things related to the
case.