I ask because growing up it happened almost every single year to the point where, whenever I went to the doctor, I would get severe anxiety. I got a physical once for nursing school and the APRN said my heart sounded like I was having severe anxiety, I was 20 something years old.
I understand that, generally, providers do this to check on people’s development, such as testicles dropping, hair, deformities, etc.
But then I hear people talking about how that was never their experience. Ever.
When I have kiddos, I want them to feel safe around the doctor. I want them to feel like they have autonomy over their own body, not the doctor just pulling your shit down and touching you while you are laying down.
TIA
A good pediatrician will do this. They can identify issues like varicocele that is stunting the growth of one of your testicles and recommend follow up which your parent can then ignore until you complain as an adult of an achy ball to find out it’s 1/3 the size of the other and the rest of the mass there were veins which when cut out instantly relieved the symptoms and laid bare your shrimp ball that was choked out and its lost opportunity for glory.
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Yeah, as part of a yearly exam for sure.
The “hold em and cough” test is for hernia, inguinal in specific. Those are possible without any specific external cause in childhood and teen years, and it isn’t something you can do yourself. You can refuse it though. Thing is, they’re better off being detected early. Should take no longer than two or three coughs.
Same goes for a testicular exam, but if you aren’t checking your own regularly, let the doc do it until you learn how to do it right. A proper testicular exam for abnormalities can take a bit longer, though only a few minutes at the outside by someone well practiced.
Otherwise, you’d only expect visual exams by most doctors.
Generally, if the young person has a penis and testicles, their primary doctor will do the exam, and that’s often a pediatrician even well into the teen tears. Young people with vaginas and vulvae may or may not have this equivalent exams done by a gynecologist, though it is more common once puberty hits afaik.
No doctor has ever looked at those parts until my 40s
Where are you in the world? Did you do sports?
It is odd how inconsistent it is. On one end you have doctors looking at boys’ junk as standard practice, and on the other hand you have grown men who have never had to pull their pants down, period.
For boys yes definitely, I was checked for hernia etc every year. No idea about girls.
I cannot think of any good reason, personally.
It’s a hernia check, completely routine when I was growing up (eastern US), it caught me by surprise the first time but then it was no big deal. They did it every year. IDK about the medical aspects but it’s not like some doctor thought it up aimed at particular people. It was an institutional thing, all boys in the school district got it (don’t know about girls), same thing at other schools, and I saw the question come up on reddit decades later so it’s still being done. There was slight physical discomfort (they press up on your testicles and ask you to cough) but at least for me, pulling down pants in front of a doctor wasn’t an issue. Having to shower in front of other kids (idk if that’s still done) was way more awkward.
There are stuff doctors need to check, like you said, for boys the development of the testicles and the genitals in general. If done properly and with forewarning it should be fine. But doctors can vary in communication skill from person to person, so one might make the whole thing non-chalant or fun even, others might induce trauma. I think it’s a normal thing, but the devil is in the how.
The pediatrician that I’ve used always directly explained why they needed to look and asked for consent before proceeding. I wish more doctors were that caring with their patients.
