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Ep. 59: Coping with teenage acne
173 Plays2 years ago
"Severe acne affects your mental health far more than some medication ever will." Sarah Wood, mum of two young men and a teenage girl.
Sarah Wood joins me on this episode to talk about her experience of teenage acne, how she coped, how she eventually treated it, and how she's supported all of her own teenagers through the same thing.
Sarah first got acne when she was 12 and she still has it at 49. But nowadays she manages it with medication, and talks about how important it is to get the right treatment for acne if it's starting to affect your teenager's mental health.
Sarah says that her own self-esteem took a double hit because she was already the 'clever' girl in school, with short hair - when the spots arrived, she gained the nickname "Zit-Slap".
She talks about things getting better when other friends started to get spots, and she was streamed into top sets at school, so the 'clever' label didn't matter any more. However, when other kids' spots started to clear up and hers didn't, she knew she wanted to do something about it.
Medication for teenage acne
Sarah told me about oxytetracycline, a type of antibiotic that is usually the starting point for medication for teenage acne, once you've exhausted lotions and creams.
Eventually, at the age of 40, she started taking Roaccutane, which all of her children have also taken at various times. Her son's acne developed from normal spots to huge lumps all over his face. Knowing how this could be dealt with, she took him straight to her dermatologist consultant and asked for Roaccutane.
Sarah thinks there's too much scaremongering around the side-effects of Roaccutane. They range from birth defects if you take it during pregnancy (women and girls are advised to have a monthly pregnancy test whilst on the medication) to dry skin, dry eyes and muscular aches and pains. It can also (rarely) cause elevated cholesterol, so tests are done to monitor this.
Sarah explains Roaccutane side-effects and how it works, and says that as parents the best thing we can do if our kids are struggling with self-esteem due to severe acne is push for a referral to a dermatologist, as this is the only way to have it prescribed, due to the monitoring required.
Where to find Sarah
Sarah is happy to talk about her experiences with severe acne. You can find her on:
- Her blog Mum of Three World
Sarah has recently sent her middle child to university so we talk a little bit about the empty nest. You can get some hope on this stage from my episode on empty nesting.
More teenage parenting tips from Helen Wills:
Helen wills is a teen mental health podcaster and blogger at Actually Mummy a resource for midlife parents of teens.
Thank you for listening! Subscribe to the Teenage Kicks podcast to hear new episodes. If you have a suggestion for the podcast please email [email protected].
There are already stories from fabulous guests about difficult things that happened to them as teenagers - including losing a parent,
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Transcript
Impact of Acne on Mental Health
00:00:00
Speaker
Severe acne affects your mental health far more than some medication ever will.
Introduction to Teenage Kicks Podcast
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to the Teenage Kicks podcast where we take the fear out of parenting or becoming a teenager.
00:00:24
Speaker
I'm Helen Wills and every week I talk to someone who had a difficult time in the teenage years but came out the other side in a good place and has insight to offer to parents and young people who might be going through the same.
Exploring Teenage Acne Issues
00:00:44
Speaker
This week we're talking about teenage acne, something which I know a lot of you are trying to work out how to deal with because you tell me. My guest this week is Sarah, a married mum of two young men and a teenage girl. She's a freelance writer who says she'd rather be running or reading and I totally get her.
00:01:04
Speaker
But we're here and we're having a good chat about all sorts of things. We've been vlogging together since 2011. But Sarah is here with me today on the podcast to talk about her acne journey. She first got acne when she was 12 and she still has it at 49.
Sarah's Acne Journey
00:01:23
Speaker
I remember how crippling it used to be as a 15 year old to get a massive acne breakout. It always seemed to happen on the day of a party or when there was some boy that I wanted to impress and nothing I did ever covered it up. It happens to all teenagers, but what about those teens who get acne so bad that it's not just a nightmare breakout once a month and a sprinkle of pimples until you're 25? I'm hoping that Sarah is going to explain how things were for her
00:01:52
Speaker
and how she dealt with it to give you some inspiration if your own teenager is dealing with similar. Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Hello. I'm just going to explain for the sake of listeners that Sarah and I had a really brilliant chat for about five minutes and then something went wrong with my recording software and we don't know what it was and we've had to start all over again. But we're professionals. We can manage that.
00:02:23
Speaker
Sarah, what did I ask you? Oh, it was, I've known Sarah since 2011, when we both first started blogging, we were just telling the stories of family life. And I've always known her as Sarah, mum of three worlds, word, mum of three world, Sarah, mum of three world. Is that still your Instagram handle,
Family Dynamics and Blogging
00:02:40
Speaker
Sarah? Still is, yes, yeah. Yeah. And you still write the fun, nice articles about daily life that so many of us stopped doing.
00:02:50
Speaker
Yeah, not as many as I used to, obviously, because the kids are grown up now. But yes, I still do blog a little bit about family life. I'm not into all this giving people advice and lists of this and lists of that. I don't get it. I can only write about things I know somehow, which is family life. Well, but that's how we all started. It was meant to be a family diary, and then we realised that it was something bigger than that, and people we didn't know were reading it. But it's lovely.
00:03:18
Speaker
And I've thought about you as a mum of teenagers for a really long time now, because we're fairly similar, you're a little bit further on than me, you've got one older. But in your bio, I just read that you've got two adults living at home now, although one of them you've just told me has gone off to university. How does that feel?
00:03:43
Speaker
him going to university was really, really hard. He's just turned 19. He's in his first year studying medicine. And it's absolutely the best thing for
Coping with Children Leaving Home
00:03:53
Speaker
him. He's having a brilliant time, not just with the studies, but with his sport as well. But yeah, I mean, I was absolutely bereft when he went. He's just left such a gaping hole in the house. He was the one person that was really the glue in our family. He's kind of
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah, the calm one and just the one that everyone relies on and every... I don't know what it is, but it's really, really tough. And I just found myself for the first couple of weeks just bursting into tears out the blue. I'm used to him not being here now, but when he comes home, it's just the best, best thing ever, you know, that the house feels whole again. And then he has to go again.
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, well, is that death by a thousand cuts that living with teenagers and young adults is? And you were just saying before we got cut off that it's like it is a grief when one of them leaves home. Yeah, it really is. I didn't really realise that. I knew it was going to be tough and
Challenges of Living with Absent Adult Children
00:04:55
Speaker
it was probably tougher than I thought it was. And someone said to me after a couple of days, it's a form of grief. And I thought, yeah, that makes sense because I just felt so dreadful.
00:05:04
Speaker
And I know I'm facing the reality. I've got a 21 year old at home. He didn't go to uni, but you know, at some point he's going to leave home and then my daughter, she's in year 12. So, you know, realistically, she's probably going to uni in a couple of years and then I'll be home alone. Well, you've got the puppy.
Meal Planning and Dietary Preferences
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:25
Speaker
Yeah. Then you've got the empty nest. I've done an episode on empty nesting with a couple of women who are that bit further on. One of them has a daughter living in America now. They've literally got no one at home with them anymore, apart from husbands or dogs and cats.
00:05:47
Speaker
Actually, it was really encouraging. They really made it sound like, yeah, it was a grief to begin with. It was hard, but they're really enjoying the empty nest now that they've got used to it. So there's hope. Oh, that's good to hear. I'll link to that one in the show notes when I publish this episode, if anybody wants to hear it.
00:06:07
Speaker
Yeah. And what's it like living with an adult who actually still lives at home? You were saying that he's out quite a lot and you never know who's going to be in the house. I'm already feeling that way because my daughter, who's 18, has a job, a boyfriend, a whole bunch of friends. She takes herself off into London to do things that she's interested in. And she's always at school. She's doing A level, so she's constantly at school for longer than she even needs to be. That's how she does her work.
00:06:38
Speaker
Already, I don't know who's going to be here. What's it like when they're coming back at, I don't know, all hours? Does your son
Sarah's Teenage Acne Experience
00:06:45
Speaker
go out and socialise and come back at two in the morning? I don't know how I'm going to cope with that. Sometimes, not as possibly not as much as he did a couple of years back. But it's more that he goes on a lot of solo holidays. He's away at the moment. And also, he's just started working away sometimes. So he's away a night or two a week with work.
00:07:07
Speaker
So you add that to the holidays, to the sort of sometimes he stays at his girlfriend's house or sometimes he goes out with his mates and he's not around that much. But, you know, no one ever gives me any warning. I've got a husband who works late, sometimes he works late. None of them give me any warning. You buy a load of food and then it's suddenly like, oh,
00:07:27
Speaker
Nobody's here to eat it. Exactly. Well, I know I've got one vegetarian and everybody else is a confirmed meat eater. So when I go to the effort to make a vegetarian meal that everyone will enjoy and three people don't show up, I'm like, oh, I just feel like a housekeeper. Yeah.
00:07:45
Speaker
Yeah, we have, well, my eldest is a vegan, which means I'm a vegetarian, but it means I'm fundamentally vegan now. And the other three are meat eaters, but really only chicken. So yeah, if it's just me and my daughter, and she's got a tiny appetite, it's like, what's the point? Because she won't eat the vegetarian slash vegan food, I certainly not going to eat the chicken. There's no point even in cooking any.
00:08:07
Speaker
Yeah, occasionally I find myself longing for the day when I can just make myself a bowl of soup and toast and go to bed early. I know I'm going to regret that and I'm going to miss the fact that my perfume is always getting borrowed when Maddie goes away to university. But it's not a simple life, is it? Not at all, no.
00:08:30
Speaker
Excuse me, Sarah, we're here to talk about acne. So can you tell me, you said you were 12 when acne first surfaced in your life. Can you just give us a little bit of a feel for what happened for you?
Bullying and Acne Persistence
00:08:43
Speaker
Yeah, so I was thinking about this. It was year seven, although we didn't even call it year seven and we called it first year. Yeah. I literally just started secondary school. I was the oldest in my class. I just turned 12 and I just started getting spots and I was the first one. So of course, you know,
00:09:00
Speaker
It got noticed and it was like, I felt like everything was stacked against me. So I got spots. I had ridiculously short hair. I looked like a boy, which short hair was more of a thing in the 80s, but even so, by normal standards, mine was still pretty short. So I got spots and the short hair.
00:09:22
Speaker
I was the cleverest in my class by some considerable distance at that time. Being clever at a comprehensive school in the eighties, not a good thing. My dad had a good job also, not a good thing. That made me posh. I wasn't posh, I was just normal. But you're clever, you're posh, you've got short hair, you've got spots.
00:09:43
Speaker
That's not a good look. So the year seven was tough. That's a real cocktail, isn't it? Ding dong, the bells are all ringing for me because we had the house on the corner of our street, which meant we had a slightly bigger garden than everybody else. And my dad had a company car, so we were posh. I was posh. I wasn't posh. I've been back to that house. It's not posh at all.
00:10:08
Speaker
And I was quite clever in my year, so I got called Swatty Dotty at school. So yeah, I'm with you on all of that.
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah, the worst name was, because of my short hair, and once I had a spot in the middle of my forehead, Zitslap. I was called Zitslap for the first couple of years. Oh, Sarah, kids are so cruel. Really nasty boys in my class. But then going into year eight, then we were put into sets, and then I was with Clever Kids, and life got a bit easier then, because they weren't horrible.
00:10:41
Speaker
and they didn't judge me for being clever because they were also clever. Yeah they probably had the same beforehand. Yeah and also with it being year eight other people were starting to get a few spots as well and then I didn't stand out as much. Yeah. So then it wasn't as bad but then other people got spots and they grew out of them and mine just never went away.
Acne Treatments Explored
00:11:04
Speaker
I never had the worst spots
00:11:06
Speaker
But they just never went. Right. So I'm interested because you do see some poor souls and I'm thinking of somebody that was in my class at school. His whole face was spots most of the time, which must have been incredibly tough. Yours wasn't like that.
00:11:26
Speaker
not at that time. No, I actually had that as an adult. And my son also had that. And it was heartbreaking. Yeah. But no, as a child, as a teenager, it, you know, it was a little bit worse than some people's, but it wasn't the worst. But I first had medication when I was 14. Just like literally a month of tablets. And then
00:11:50
Speaker
didn't have any more until I was 16. And then I went on something called oxytetracycline, which I believe is an antibiotic, which I took about four years.
00:12:00
Speaker
between the ages of 16 and 20. So is that what they do? That's how they deal with acne that's problematic. That's how they deal with it medically with an antibiotic. Yeah. I mean, if you go to the doctor and ask for help, that's probably what you're going to get. They'll probably start you off with some lotion and there are lots of different types of lotion that work in different types of ways.
00:12:22
Speaker
But there's also antibiotics. I remember a cream. My mum's friend was a pharmacist and she got this cream. I can't remember what it was called now, but that's not surprising. It was 30 years ago. No, more than that.
00:12:38
Speaker
40 years ago. And I used to daub it on spots and let it dry on overnight in the hopes that it would really dry out my skin. I didn't want it to be all over my skin. I just wanted it to
00:12:54
Speaker
kind of ease the crap out of boil type spots that were on my chin and my nose. But it wasn't terribly effective. And as I said in the intro there, I remember piling on concealer and it would just look a different colour and cakey. Yeah, you see, I never did that. I never covered them up. I think it was quite rare in that because I
00:13:19
Speaker
Like my friends, they'd get the odd spot. And I remember this, it's something I hate to this day. It's when people go, oh, I've got a spot. I can't believe I've got a spot. Oh no, I look so awful. Don't look at my spot. I've got a spot. I've got a spot. And I used to say to them, I wish I had a spot. Because I always had lots of spots and people would make such a fuss about one spot. And I just think it's not, you know, I don't know. I couldn't deal with people making a fuss about one spot and they would cover it up and I just, I just let them be.
00:13:49
Speaker
Yeah,
Children's Acne Treatment Journey
00:13:50
Speaker
you're right. Actually, minimising it is probably the best thing to begin with, unless it is really seriously problematic or getting you down. I said to my son the other day, actually, because he's moaning about a spot that he's got and I said, yeah, but it's just totally normal, right? Everybody else has got one. He's like, yeah, it comes and goes and everyone gets it. I think it's not nice, is it? And especially for girls
00:14:15
Speaker
Well, I don't know. I was going to say, especially for girls, because there's so much put on the way you look. But actually, these days, boys are under that pressure as well. And they probably, most of them don't even want to try and cover it up with makeup because of what that might say about them. So it's probably even tougher now than it was back then. What do you think? What's kind of... Well, you must know, because you've got a teenager who's struggled with acne. So what's your experience with him?
00:14:45
Speaker
All of my kids have had it. But yeah, my eldest had it the worst. It was horrendous.
00:14:54
Speaker
I should say that ultimately, at the age of 40, I finally went on roacutane, which is the strongest acne drug there is. And there's all sorts of scare stories about it, which for me have proved unfounded. But my son ended up, in fact, all my kids have been on roacutane. My daughter's still on it. But my son had really, really horrendous acne. He started like I did with quite mild acne around year seven.
00:15:22
Speaker
got a little bit worse went on the antibiotics blah blah blah and then suddenly at year 10 just went downhill really quickly and had these great lumps at the top of his nose and then he got great lumps a bit further down his nose and they were so big that they were obscuring his vision. Oh gosh.
00:15:40
Speaker
And he'd been to the doctors once before, and he'd got an appointment, a referral, and then I took him back. I was, please, can you do something about these? And they couldn't, I thought maybe they'd be able to pop them, but they could do nothing. And he had a referral to the hospital. And when it came through, it was in four months time. And it was for the dermatology nurse because he was under 16. And at that point, I already had a relationship with the dermatologist. And I
00:16:08
Speaker
in my, at the age of 41, I'd gone to absolute hell and back with my own skin. So the dermatologist knew me and he knew my history and how bad I'd got. So I basically got in touch and said, please see my son because he's in a really bad way. So we bypassed all the channels and got him to the dermatologist and he put him straight on roacute. And his skin was just, it was just a series of lumps.
00:16:35
Speaker
God. Honestly, it was like Freddy
Roaccutane's Effects and Benefits
00:16:38
Speaker
Krueger. It was absolutely awful. Poor kid. Yeah. And that has a real impact on mental health, doesn't it? How did he feel about all of that? Bless him, he did cover it with makeup and he felt better in doing that. And I think people knew he wore it and they were okay with it. And it did look better with makeup on.
00:17:01
Speaker
And I always thought he'd been really, really resilient and it had been fine and no one had been horrible to him. And a few months on, he did tell me that, yes, he had had a bit of trouble from people. But yeah, he is remarkably resilient and he coped remarkably well with it. And I don't think many people would. And I'm very grateful that he did cope as well as he did. Once he was on the romacutane, he did start improving fairly quickly.
00:17:28
Speaker
And he was 15 when he was at his worst. It was like 15 and...
00:17:36
Speaker
15 and like four months say something like that and by his 16th birthday he had beautiful clear skin. He was always right and still is such a beautiful boy and he was back to being beautiful. Right so around six months or so then that's how long it takes to work so it's not a quick fix but it does a really good job by the sound of it. Can you tell us
00:17:59
Speaker
how roacutane works and then tell us a little bit about why there are scare stories because it's not something I know anything about. Yeah, so it is the strongest active drug there is. You can only get it from a dermatologist at the hospital and you can only get it from the hospital pharmacy. The worst side effect is birth defects, so you absolutely cannot go on it if pregnant or likely to become pregnant because your child
00:18:26
Speaker
will need to be aborted. They will have birth defects. So for women and girls, you are supposed to have a monthly pregnancy test while you're on it. As I was 40 when I went on it, I said, look, I don't need this.
00:18:38
Speaker
My daughter were not on a 15. Again, she's not a good boyfriend. We said she doesn't need this. So we've opted out of it for both of us. So that's the worst side effect, but it works by really drying out your skin. It's a form of vitamin A largely, and it dries out your skin. And I actually see it working on myself. It's like, get some spots.
00:19:01
Speaker
and then they literally peel away. Your skin dries out and they just peel away. So you've got permanently dry lips and you can get dry eyes. My hands, my skin cuts quite easily because it's so dry. Yeah that's it really and you can get muscular aches
00:19:23
Speaker
And there's very rare side effects where it might increase your cholesterol levels. So you have blood tests before you go on it and then you add blood tests a few weeks later just to check your white blood cells and your cholesterol levels. And there have been sort of anecdotal connections with suicidal thoughts and depression.
00:19:45
Speaker
but the likelihood is that's not the romactant and that's the acne. Because severe acne affects your mental health far more than some medication ever will. And that's really the long and the short of it. So they don't like dishing it out. You do need to have severe acne before you'll get prescribed it. But actually,
00:20:12
Speaker
There's a surprising number of people that have been on it. You come across quite a lot of adults that say, oh, yeah, I had that when I was 17. I had that when I was 22. You know, it's not as uncommon as you think. And so the theory is, I assume that for most people, you can come off it at some point. What sort of age does that normally happen?
00:20:31
Speaker
Well, you're only supposed to be on it for a few months and there's some maths that the dermatologist does based on your body weight. Basically, you have to have a certain number of milligrams in total for your body weight and you have those milligrams over the course of however many months it takes.
00:20:49
Speaker
Now, you could go on a low dose and be on it for longer or on a higher dose and be on it for a shorter period of time. I was on 20 milligrams. My daughter's on 20 milligrams. My sons were both on 40 because obviously they're a bit bigger. Theoretically, my sons could have gone on to 60. Theoretically, my daughter could have gone on to 40. As they were doing okay,
00:21:13
Speaker
it seems sensible just to stay on the slightly lower dose and not get side effects. My middle boy, he did get some muscular aches, which affected his sporting performance, which he wasn't happy about. That was on the 40 milligrams. So there was no way there was any point in increasing that.
00:21:33
Speaker
But my daughter, no side effects. My son, my eldest son, no side effects. I had a strange, what was probably allergic reaction to it when I first went on it, but that settled. And to be honest, I'm still on it now. I shouldn't be. Right. You stay on it until you've had the calculated dose and then in theory you come off it, but you haven't.
Psychological Effects of Acne
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's probably because I was so old and my acne was so well established that I've never been able to come off it. So I came off it and then it just immediately came back. So I'm now on a very low dose. I'm on five milligrams, which my dermatologist assures me
00:22:17
Speaker
He's had people on five milligrams for years and years. And, you know, it may be at some point I can come off it and if I can't, well, I'll stay on it. I mean, I do still get spots. I do still have spots now on that. If I was taking 20 milligrams, I wouldn't have spots, but I can't stay on 20 milligrams for life. Okay. Yeah. So it's just a question of managing it and coping.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah, so just take us back to when you were younger with it. Can you tell me, you said it got a little bit better and people were a bit kinder about it. Did it ever impact your mental health in a really big way as you progressed as a young person? No, it didn't. I mean, that's just, that's probably just me. Yeah, I mean,
00:23:10
Speaker
You know, I was lucky, I guess. No, fair enough. I was being picked on in year seven, that wasn't nice. But once they got out of year seven, it was all okay in that sense. And then you were on the row, yeah, you were on the row, Accutane, so it was under control, I guess, by the time you were what age?
Encouragement for Seeking Treatment
00:23:29
Speaker
Oh, I didn't get back till I was 40. Oh, okay, right. So you went all through...
00:23:35
Speaker
well yeah young i mean i was on various different types of medication mainly lotions from the age of 16 right until i was 40 um and i'd be on this one lotion called xylirate which i would have uh
00:23:50
Speaker
Two years, then my skin would get a bit worse. I'd go back to the doctor, he'd give me something else. I'd be on that for six months. It would get better and get worse. I'd go back on the Zenerit. So yeah, I was on this lotion for the best part of 20 years before I finally went on the rheocutane when I was 40.
00:24:07
Speaker
Okay, and what would you say to parents whose children are struggling with this and they really are at their wit's end and wanting to do something about it? And I know waiting times are even worse now because of the backlog from COVID. Would you have any strategies for making sure your child gets seen by the right person as quickly as possible rather than having to go through the system?
00:24:31
Speaker
don't think there is a way around it really. I mean I was lucky with my son because the dermatologist already knew me but if you or your child are at all worried about your acne don't be afraid to go to the doctor, always go to the doctor and if that particular GP can't help you go to a different GP because
00:24:50
Speaker
we're lucky that our GP is a skin specialist. Now I didn't know that until I started going to my skin problems and it turns out he is a skin specialist so I always make sure that we all see him and he is very good at making referrals to the hospital and he knows my family and our history so
00:25:08
Speaker
so we get to the hospital more quickly than other people might. But yeah, don't be afraid to go to the doctor, and don't be afraid to, if a treatment doesn't work, ask for another one, and ask for a referral to the hospital. Because I think people just think, oh, just drink some more water, or just eat a bit more healthy, it doesn't work.
00:25:30
Speaker
No. But it's all a myth. And there's nothing worse for me than well-meaning people saying things like that. Oh, have you thought of drinking some more water? Oh, God, if only I'd thought about it 25 years ago. Drink more water. You know, it doesn't work. Well, it's interesting you say that because my kids both got issues with spots here and there like normal teenagers have. And whenever they complain, that's what I trot out. Drink more water, eat some more fruit and veg.
00:25:59
Speaker
So is there any benefit to that apart from obvious other benefits to your body, but is there benefit to your skin of that or not? There might be a benefit for people who have just the odd spot here and there. Yeah. Or, you know, with the hormones and all that kind of thing. But like if you've got proper acne, it's not going to make any difference whether or not you eat chocolate, how much water you drink, that's not going to cure it.
00:26:25
Speaker
I like your point about GP specialists. I've only figured that out a few years ago that different GPs are specialists in specific things. It's probably worth asking your doctor surgery, isn't it, for which doctor is most interested in skin conditions or
00:26:46
Speaker
well, whatever the issue is you've
Advocating for Specialized Medical Help
00:26:48
Speaker
got. I've definitely done that with pain management because I have fibromyalgia and some doctors really just want to prescribe slightly stronger versions of ibuprofen and make you go away and some will do something more serious with you. So it's probably the same for skin. Yeah, definitely. And yeah, whatever your issue is, it's worth finding out if there is a specialist at your surgery because, you know,
00:27:16
Speaker
Health is such an enormous thing, isn't it? Health and medicine. They might be GPs, but I can't know everything about everything. No, exactly. It's very general and you need an expert when it's that bad. And as we referenced earlier, something as visible as a problem on your face can affect mental health in quite a big way.
00:27:40
Speaker
Would you have any tips for parents whose children or even for teenagers who think that who are struggling, who don't feel like they can say to their mum, oh, mum, look, I'm really, really depressed about the state of my skin in case they get the brush off of like, oh, it's normal, like I did with my son today. He's fine, but it's really normal, isn't it? You'll be fine. And everybody else has got the same going on.
00:28:05
Speaker
Maybe with someone who's really feeling it. I'm like the other way around because like my daughter's skin went downhill quite quickly. Summer, was it summer 2020 into early 2021? And I was watching her like a hawk and I was straight on it. You do go to the doctor, you will go on Rakite.
00:28:29
Speaker
And she was like, oh, it's fine. It's normal. I said, it's not normal. Right. She wasn't supposed to know what's not normal. But yeah, I mean, just talk to them about it. And yeah, take the take them seriously. If they're concerned, then you should be concerned. And yeah, no, just just you can just look at their friends, look at the other teenagers and see what they look like. Because I do this.
00:28:58
Speaker
I can't help myself. I'll see someone behind a till in a shop and they've got terrible skin and I want to say to them, please go and get some help for that. But you can't do that. But yeah, look at other people and just think, hang on a minute, is it normal or isn't it? And if it's not, take them to the doctor. Listen to them.
00:29:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's all you can do really. Yeah, but there are things you can do. So that's what I guess a lot of people don't realise. It's not just clear a sill and cucumber. There are medical things that can be done and it's worth doing. Because as you said before, there's nothing more important than your mental health. That's it. I mean, people are afraid of medication a lot of the time. Oh, you know, there's only spots, don't need medication.
00:29:51
Speaker
if it's making you feel really rubbish about yourself, that's far more important, you know, to feel better about yourself and worry about putting a perfectly safe medication into your body. Yeah. Yeah.
Social Media and Conclusion
00:30:04
Speaker
Yeah. Good point. Sarah, you're really active on Twitter and you're on Instagram as well. Do you want to just tell people where they can find you if something struck a chord and they want to ask you more about this?
00:30:20
Speaker
Yeah, sure. I am Sarah with an H. M-O-3-W on both Twitter and Instagram. That stands for Sarah, Mum of Three World. Yes. And that's what I search on those platforms when I can't remember what your handle is and it always comes up. And you've also got the blog, which is also Mum of Three World, is that right? Mum of Three World, yes.
00:30:42
Speaker
written in words, hasn't got the number in it. Right, yeah. I'll put those links in the show notes and hopefully you won't mind if anyone thinks, oh God, I really need to talk to somebody about my child's acne. Yeah, I've written a lot about acne and roacutane on my blog and they're still some of my most popular posts and I've always happy to talk to people about it because I feel I've experienced so much both myself and through my kids
00:31:11
Speaker
Um, something else I want to say about my son and I can't even remember what it was. But yeah, I, I feel like I've really been through it all. And I've got to the point where like the dermatologist, he trusts me to make decisions about my own care and my kids own care. So he'll say, what do you want us to do about it? And I'll say, well,
00:31:30
Speaker
Could we have a low dose of, he knows that I know what we need and he will just trust us to deal with that. And there's not many people in that position. So yeah, I'm very happy to talk to people about it. And I would always recommend going for doctors always.
00:31:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, sometimes that's it, isn't it? You get as I mean, I know because we've got medical conditions in our house. And I know what I've stopped phoning the doctor, because I know as much as they do now about most things, we get updates every now and then with them all up to date. But they know they trust that we know what we're doing. And if we're asking for something, it's because we need it. So you become an expert. And that's it. But it's good to have that as someone that
00:32:17
Speaker
knows all the details and can answer questions and advocate a little bit. So yeah, go and read Sarah's blogs and I can understand why they're well visited because I know, like I said at the beginning, so many people mention this to me when we're talking about our teenagers. I know there's a lot of call for it. So go read Sarah's blogs, follow her on SarahMama3World,
00:32:43
Speaker
MO3W on social media. And Sarah, thank you so much for sharing your story with us today. Thank you. No worries.
00:32:58
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it. Thank you too to everyone who's already rated and reviewed the podcast. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Amazon, it would mean the world to me if you could leave a review. It really helps get the word out as well as making me very happy to read what you have to say. If this episode strikes a chord for you, please share it with anyone else you know who might be in the same boat and hit subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
00:33:27
Speaker
If you have a story or suggestion for something you'd like to see covered on the podcast, you can email me at teenagekickspodcast at gmail.com or message me on Instagram. I am Helen Wills. I love hearing from all my listeners. It really makes difference to me on this journey. See you next week when I'll be chatting to another brilliant guest about the highs and lows of parenting teens. Bye for now.