Everyday Language (Parents)

Everyday language refers to words that a child and the whole family can understand without a dictionary. In child and adolescent psychiatry, terms such as “comorbidity,” “emotional regulation,” or an abbreviation like “F32.1” are used. To parents, this often sounds like a foreign language. Everyday language translates such terms into phrases from family life: “emotional regulation” becomes “how well someone can manage their feelings.” The technical term remains important for doctors, therapists, and health insurance claims. At home, what matters is that everyone means the same thing when they talk about the child. Especially when it comes to topics like anxiety, eating disorders, or ADHD, the choice of words plays a key role in determining whether a child feels understood or withdraws further.

An unfamiliar word quickly fills one’s mind with the worst possible assumptions. When a 10-year-old hears the word “disorder,” they often think “broken” or “there’s something wrong with me.” “Depressive episode” sounds like it’s for life, but the word “episode” actually describes a period with a beginning and an end. Studies on health literacy show that many people in Germany have trouble making sense of medical information. People who don’t understand a diagnosis are less likely to ask for clarification and are less likely to follow recommendations. With children, there’s the added challenge that they fill in the gaps with their imagination. A child who associates “therapy” with punishment will resist every appointment. If you rephrase the word as “a place where someone helps you sort through your thoughts,” that resistance decreases.

A few terms that parents often come across in medical reports or during consultations, with everyday explanations:

• Comorbidity: two things happening at the same time, such as anxiety and sleep problems
• Outpatient: Treatment takes place at a doctor’s office; the child continues to sleep at home
• Inpatient: the child stays at the hospital for a period of time, including overnight
• Psychoeducation: explaining what’s going on with the child and what helps
• Behavioral therapy: practicing different ways to cope with difficult situations
• Remission: the symptoms have subsided or disappeared

The approach is simple: mention the technical term once, then immediately follow it up with a sentence from everyday life. This way, the correct term remains accessible for forms, and the child still has a mental image of it.

A doctor’s note often contains abbreviations from the ICD-10, the International Classification of Diseases. “F41.1” stands for generalized anxiety disorder, and “F50.0” for anorexia. These codes are intended for billing purposes, not for discussions with the family. Parents should ask questions during the appointment until they can repeat the findings in their own words. A tried-and-true way to start: “Did I understand correctly that…?” If you don’t read the report until you get home, you can look up specific terms in a reputable glossary. At the moment of diagnosis, it helps to jot down the key message in a single sentence before the technical terms cloud the picture. A split diagnosis will only become clear to the child once the parents have understood it themselves.

Children need short, truthful sentences in language appropriate for their age. An elementary school child understands “Your head has too many worries right now; let’s get someone to help you clean up” better than any diagnosis. How parents convey a diagnosis to their child often determines whether the child trusts the treatment from the start. Concrete images are more helpful than abstract terms. Anxiety can be described as “an alarm system that goes off too often,” and a compulsion as “a thought that keeps knocking on the door.” Child-friendly psychoeducation works precisely with images like these. Older teens, on the other hand, often want to hear the actual technical term and look it up themselves. In that case, it’s more honest to use the term and open a reliable source together.

There are free resources available for medical reports that are difficult to understand. The nonprofit portal “Was hab ich?” has medical professionals translate medical reports into plain language—anonymously and at no cost. The glossary on gesund.bund.de, a service of the Federal Ministry of Health, explains technical terms and common abbreviations. If you want to evaluate a website, check whether it explains technical terms and discloses its sources. Psychoeducation for parents is based precisely on this understanding. Rückenwind helps families make sense of and translate medical terminology, but does not provide a diagnosis. Only a child and adolescent psychiatrist or a medical or psychotherapeutic specialist can determine whether the symptoms indicate a disorder that requires treatment.