HIV/AIDS 2 of 3 – Preparing our kids (Sally Smith)

You are listening to MemCare by Radio, a Trans World Radio production. 

Hello my friends.  Welcome to our Wednesday time together here at MemCare by Radio.  I'm Maggie Fuller your host.  I invite you to listen for the next 15 minutes to a wonderful program that I think will be very helpful and informative to you.  Our topic today is "How to Talk to Your children about HIV and AIDS".  My special guest is Sally.  She was with us last week for our Introduction on AIDS and HIV.  Today she continues talking to us.  Sally worked overseas for more than 16 years with her husband and their children, and while living overseas, she developed and ran an HIV prevention education and care program.  This program was very helpful in counseling and training nurses as well as developing school curriculums.  She still wants to continue using her professional and international HIV and AIDS consultancy skills as she teaches others about the AIDS virus.  I greet you Sally.  Thank you once again for joining me here at MemCare.  Talk to us today about our kids and how we can best train them to know more about HIV and AIDS.

Today I thought it would be good to look at families who might be living in another country where there might be more HIV and AIDS than they'd have at home.  Perhaps they haven't thought about the kind of things that they need to tell their kids, the kind of things they need to think about if they’ve got families around them with children where there might be HIV in the family.  The first thing I want to say is that it's really important for us to reach out to families that have somebody in the family with HIV and AIDS.  It’s really important that we show love and care so that these people are accepted and they're not so pushed out of society, because it's not a big frightening disease.  They’re the same kind of people as us. So we want to show them our love, and if they come into our homes and they eat with us, they share our knives and forks and our cups and plates and bowls then we're not going to catch HIV.  That's a really important message to give to our children too.  If your children go into their house and they play, they eat, they socialize with them, they use their bathroom, your children are not going to catch AIDS.  They can come into your home.  You can allow your children to go into their homes.  It’s not because of the conditions in the house that mean it’s dirty or that the children in that house have caught AIDS.  It's a completely different method of transmission. 

You're right Sally.  I think we do need to treat one another kindly and make sure that our children know that others who may have the HIV virus are still our friends and we can minister to them.  Now what about safety issues for children?  You mentioned last week that there were four ways that you could contract the AIDS virus, one of course being sexual contact.  A second way was through the use of dirty needles and you also said that a mom could transfer the virus to her unborn baby.  Another one, though, was blood and I think that would be one area that we probably need to talk to our children about.  What kind of things would you suggest?

What your children need to know -- and it doesn't matter what country you live in, whether it's your home country or a country that's not your home country -- all children need to know that you can catch diseases from blood.  So when somebody cuts themselves, or when they fall over, you shouldn't try and wash that cut yourself.  You should go to an adult and the cuts need to be washed properly with soap and water and then covered up.  Particularly if two people have cut themselves at the same time, one of the dangers is that if the blood gets mixed up that is when you can catch diseases, one way that AIDS / HIV can be spread.  It's actually a very low risk.  In fact you need quite a lot of blood to be mixed up before you can catch AIDS.  As I said, the HIV virus is not a very good virus at transmitting itself.  It needs a lot more blood than, for example, hepatitis, but we still need to teach our children the principle that mixing blood is a potential danger for catching the disease.  I know in the past some kids would form clubs and they'd say we're going to bond to each other and we're all going to cut our fingers and we're going to mix the blood, or we're going to make fingerprints on a paper and we're all going to be in this club.  That's the kind of activity that these days we would discourage in our children and say "you know let’s find another way of promising to be friends with one another".  The idea of becoming a blood brother is quite dangerous now with the disease. 

Your description, Sally, reminds me of the old cowboy movies where one friend would use a knife and make a little pin prick of blood and the other would do the same.  They would become blood brothers.  Obviously, that's not a great idea for today’s society.  Good suggestion.   Now, though, what about me as a mom?  I've got someone who has a wound and they're bleeding.  I need to take care of them.  How can I do that effectively and safely?  What do our listeners need to know regarding care for wounds?

I think Mom needs to know that any blood is potentially infectious and that she should clean up carefully.  If you’ve not got any cuts on your own hands, there is no danger of the blood going on your skin.  You won’t catch HIV from that.  But, if you've just been peeling the potatoes and you’ve got an opened cut on your finger then you should put a pair of gloves on to clean someone else’s blood.  If you haven’t got gloves then use a couple of plastic bags.  The danger is not blood on the skin.  The danger is if you have an open wound and the blood gets into your blood.  Most moms who would clean up bloody knees of a little boy who has fallen in the yard.  It's not a problem.

Those are good reminders Sally.  Thank you for helping us to be safe when cleaning up a wound or cut.  I didn't even think about the importance of having my hands covered and even just having a little plastic bag would be helpful if we have any cuts on our own skin.  Now is there anything else we should talk to our children about?  What else would be important for them to know?

I think the other whole area that children need to be aware of is that of their sexual safety.  Obviously children in any country (and this is not necessarily just an AIDS issue, this is just an issue to protect our children) need to know that their private parts are their own private areas and it's not okay for other people to touch or play with those private parts, apart from a doctor.  So that is another whole area that parents need to educate their children in, but I think that’s not really the same thing as HIV/AIDS.  So I think for the parents thinking about what they need to teach their children in terms of HIV, I would stick pretty much with the blood things.  I think what’s important for kids to understand is that anybody’s blood can be infectious and it’s not just the little chap with HIV that we need to be afraid of.  Also, children can be far ahead of the adults in not discriminating between one another.

You've taught us some very good things today, Sally, that we can teach our children as well.  Now if you had a final thought for our listeners, what would it be?

Basically the message to transmit to our children is that people with HIV are no different to us.  We can love them.  We can have fellowship with them.   We can share family meals with them. We can have them in our home.  We can go in their homes, and we’re not going to catch HIV.  Let’s allow our children to go ahead of us.  Let’s let them lead the way and let the children show the adults that we don’t need to be afraid of this disease.  We can love the people in our community who have it. 

Sally, you've been a blessing once again here at MemCare.  I do thank you for joining me today.