From the series: Stories from Intercultural Mediation Practice
12 January 2024
At the Pediatrician’s
A Mandarin-speaking intercultural mediator tells us:
A mother and father were at the pediatrician’s office in hospital with their four-week-old baby.
The baby was running a fever, crying a lot and had a swollen belly. While the doctor tried to explain to the parents what could be the matter, the mother often ran away to the baby, who was crying in the next room. The father was busy on his phone. After a while, the pediatrician began to get annoyed. He told the mother, “We are having a very important conversation here; please let your baby cry for a while.”
The doctor also felt that the father was showing disrespect by constantly looking at his phone during the conversation. The father explained that was not his intention: he was talking to a pediatrics service in China. That service had given him some possible diagnoses, while adding that they had not seen the child and so could not say for sure what the problem was.
The Belgian pediatrician explained that several tests had already been done and that the parents could be confident in the experience of the medical team. At one point, I started getting angry myself, as the father did not look up from his phone while I translated the doctor’s words either.
I stopped translating and said, “Please listen.” In response, the father said, “Just talk, I am listening,” but kept looking at his phone. I then told him, “I believe you respect and trust the doctor, and you trust me too, but you also need to demonstrate your respect and trust and this is not the way.”
The father then did put his phone away so that proper communication could finally take place.
Deze casus heeft mij echt geraakt, omdat ik zelf een turbulente kindertijd heb gehad. Het was een blik in de spiegel. Ook mijn ouders hadden het moeilijk met het leven in België en keerden telkens terug. Dat maakte dat ik mij steeds weer moest aanpassen aan een nieuwe omgeving. Ik miste de school, de vrienden en leerkrachten en moest bij elke terugkeer opnieuw beginnen. Wat doet het met een kind als het voortdurend heen en weer verhuist tussen twee werelden? Het maakt hem of haar sterk – maar tegelijk ook kwetsbaar.
