Teen Club
Although the Baylor Clinic’s primary focus is on clinical care, they have discovered the merit in providing psychosocial care as well, especially in the adolescent age group. Adolescence can be a complex transition from childhood to adulthood, and is marked by rapid growth, sexual maturity, and development of more complex reasoning and abstract thought. Adolescents are assuming more independence and exploring the difference between right and wrong. Peer interactions are extremely influential in their daily decision making.
During this challenging time, access to structured, group support systems allows them to develop a positive self esteem, make healthy decisions, and become productive adults. To help during this difficult period of transition, Baylor has initiated an adolescent support group that meets every month to provide adolescents with HIV with the support that they need.
Over the last three years, the Baylor Adolescence Support Group has grown to around 120 participants between the ages of 10 and 18. Preadolescent and adolescent patients gather on the third Saturday of every month in a session that is facilitated by the clinical staff. The goal is to make the support group productive, fun, and educational. The day starts with a short clinic that allows the kids to receive their medications, avoiding missed school days. This is followed by support group activities, including arts and crafts, dramas, debates, games, and discussion of important topics. This month, the discussion topics were sexual development, reproduction, and positive prevention.
Yiwen and I were in charge of planning and facilitating the activities and discussion. Last month, the students requested that this month’s topic be “sex and dating”. Before we began the curriculum, we wanted to make sure that everyone was comfortable with the topics. For the first activity, we ask the participants to put aside their fears of saying taboo words during this exercise, explaining that we must learn to talk about various sexual parts of the body and different sexual behaviors appropriately in order to protect our health. We emphasized that it’s important to be comfortable talking about sex and its consequences with your partner and with your peers.
It was obvious that that many of the teens (as in America!) find it embarrassing to discuss subjects that touch on sexuality and its consequences. However, when dealing with topics such as sexual health and HIV, we MUST be able to talk about sexual attitudes, behaviors, and the consequences of unprotected sex. We felt that it was important for the audience to feel comfortable with the language that was being used. So, we divided the room up into seven groups, gave each group two “sex terms”, and asked them to list synonyms, slangs, or SiSwati translations of the words. Each group presented their lists, and—after tons of laughter—we decided which words were going to be used in the classroom, at home, and with partners.
For the second activity, we asked the entire group to help us list changes that boys and girls experience during puberty. Several minutes were spent discussing whether or not girls develop body odor.
Finally, we had two teams work together to draw the male and female reproductive systems, and compared them to textbook diagrams of the reproductive systems. This activity provoked tons of questions. Five or six boys asked wonderful questions about menstruation. Is it painful? Why is it painful? When does it end? Why is there bleeding? When is ovulation? As it turns out, the teens almost unanimously thought that the bleeding was caused by the bursting of the egg.
This was the first of three months that will be spent on sexual development, reproduction, and positive prevention. The clinic was thankful that we had developed curriculum and activities for the next few months.