Lola and Toni, the two usual protagonists of the stories of the pediatrician Lucía Galán, return to bookstores this September with
Autumn Tales of Lucía, my pediatrician
(Timunmas), a volume with which the Asturian popularizer begins a collection of storybooks that will run through all the seasons of the year bringing young readers closer to the most varied topics (going back to school, healthy food, tantrums, etc.). “Children's stories are a very useful tool for learning. Many times we adults try to educate our children with a language that is not appropriate. However, children's stories, through characters with whom they can identify, are a very valuable instrument, because children capture the concepts much better through these characters and the emotions they arouse in them ”, says Galán, who recognizes that being a mother and, above all, working all day with children helps her to manage the language of the little ones, being also,in her own way, a child disseminator who educates the parents of the future from her consultation. “I am certain that if we educate our children in a rigorous dissemination based on scientific evidence we are buying time, because when all these children who read these stories today are parents, they will know by heart that, for example, they do not have to be so scared if your children have a fever or green snot ”.
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Lucía Galán: "Well-educated children in health will be well-informed parents"
Question.
Among all the topics you deal with in
Lucía's Autumn Tales, my pediatrician
slips into one that is not exactly easy to explain to children: rare diseases.
Answer.
This story is dedicated to a boy in my office, Álvaro, who is now 10 years old and suffers from a rare disease, Rubinstein Taybi Syndrome.
It is important to educate our children in diversity, tolerance and respect, because we have about 7,000 rare diseases in the world.
In all my books there is always room for diversity and disability, and in this one I did not want to miss the opportunity to pay tribute to all the families who live with children or adolescents with rare diseases.
P.
Going back to school is one of the great milestones of late summer and early fall.
A return to school that, by the way, soon turns into an otitis for Lola, the main character.
Is the return to school noticeable in pediatric consultations?
R.
Children return to school and infections inevitably return, so it is time to manage colds, coughs, otitis and diarrhea.
It shows a lot.
The first week of September, for example, was a very quiet week.
However, in the second the activity already doubled.
It is something we have to live with.
The secret is that parents know at all times what they have to do and that they are clear that the vast majority of the processes that their children go through do not even need to go through the pediatrician, but in two or three days are resolved.
Q.
I don't know if the pandemic, with all the limitations and fears, has somewhat cut off that "rush" to go to the pediatrician.
R.
I would tell you that what the pandemic has achieved is that we value the Health we had, that almost immediate access to the pediatrician.
That this has disappeared has generated a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety, because the usual "let's see what happens to my son" was added "let's see if it's going to be covid."
My perception is that there are still mothers and fathers with a lot of doubts and a lot of insecurity.
It is something we see every day, although perhaps now we begin to see them calmer.
Q.
You also deal with the subject of tantrums in a kind of fable.
Are they a common reason in consultation?
R.
It is a star topic that requires a lot of time to explain to parents and for which there are no master formulas, because in the end each child has a temperament or circumstances. What usually worries parents with tantrums, more than anything else, is what has happened to their children, how it is possible that overnight they start having tantrums because of everything. Many times, unconsciously, the focus is sought outside (the nursery, the park, the grandparents, etc.), but there are no culprits here, it is simply a phase of normal development that practically 100% of children go through. two and five years. So the first thing is to normalize the situation, eliminate the feeling of guilt and the search for guilty,explain to parents how children's brains work and how these types of conflicts can be managed depending on the circumstances of each one. Of course, when your children reach adolescence you laugh at the tantrums of two years.
'Autumn stories from Lucia, my pediatrician' (Timunmas)
P.
In the last story, parents Lola and Toni go on a date and take a moment for themselves, leaving the little ones in the care of their grandparents.
How necessary those appointments get, right?
A.
Of course they are!
And that story is written precisely from that need to see that going out with your partner without your children does not make you a bad father or a bad mother, that the need to have minutes, hours or days to yourself does not make you a mother worse.
Our children need their parents to be calm and happy, that they are well, and if that happens to go to dinner with your partner or to go away for a weekend and that the children stay with their grandparents, then welcome.
I believe that children have to be educated in that generous love towards them, towards our partners, towards our jobs ...
P.
But, alas, guilt!
R. You
have to try to calm that feeling of guilt that many mothers and fathers have when they decide to dedicate that time to themselves. Being a self-sacrificing mother or self-sacrificing father does not make you better for your children. Sometimes, in fact, it is the opposite, because from that fatigue and since not having time to even look in the mirror, it is difficult to give the best of yourself to your children. And then it is that this, if you do not realize it in time, has a cost. In you, in your health even (because those who did sports, stop doing it), in your relationship with your partner, etc. So we have to try to have a vocation as gardeners and water all the
plants
of our garden: our children, our friends, our partner, ourselves ... I know it is difficult, but if we do not make it our goal, in the end, our children's day-to-day life absorbs us.
Q.
Talking about time for oneself, inevitably, leads me to talk about conciliation, because without conciliation it is impossible to find time for oneself.
Is there reconciliation or is it grandparents?
R.
Grandparents for the lucky ones who have them available, healthy and retired.
I want to think that we are better than we were in terms of conciliation, that companies are more aware of this, but even so, we still have a lot to do.
In the end, the reality is that women give up much more than men and the general feeling of many women is that they are not capable of developing as professionally as they would like when they become mothers.
P.
How does Lucía Galán reconcile, by the way, with all the scrubs in which she is involved?
A.
My reconciliation came when my children entered adolescence.
Now they are independent, they come and go, you no longer have to worry about all the headaches that you had in early childhood, suddenly you find time for yourself, for your friends, for your partner.
Since my children turned 8, 9, 10 years old, which was just when the boom of
Lucia my pediatrician
started, I was able to begin to develop professionally in all fields.
Q.
Sometimes we are still in a bit of a hurry.
Or very high expectations.
R.
Many parents with children of 3, 4 or 5 years old write to me asking me how I do it, that life does not give them. I remind you that when my children were that age, they didn't give me life either. I didn't even have social networks! Sometimes my feeling is that yes, we have very high expectations. A woman who has just become a mother cannot be compared to me, because I already have my children in another vital stage. But I also went through that tunnel where you don't have time for anything other than to work and raise. That is why I always recommend patience and that you think that when your children are 10, 11 or 12 years old they will find that space. It is absolutely normal not to have time for oneself when children are small, but that is not why we are going to abandon ourselves. Quite the opposite,We are going to fight to scratch moments that give us energy to move on, even if it is half an hour to have an aperitif or an afternoon at the movies.
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