Knee-jerk Parental Instincts To Avoid If Your Child Gets Sick

Nobody likes it when their child gets sick. It is a stressful experience, especially if you don’t have a medical background. You just don’t know what’s wrong. 

 

Going with your instinct, though, might not be a good idea, even in lockdown. Sometimes your child needs specific interventions to help them feel better and prevent lasting damage. Other times, the treatment is worse than the disease. 

 

Here are some of the things you should avoid doing if your child complains. 

 

Antibiotics For An Infection

 

Kids get ear, nose, and throat infections all the time. It is just a part of growing up in a world where thousands of microbes are out to get you. 

 

Parents, however, are often tempted to reach for the antibiotics in their medicine cabinet to eradicate the problem. Unfortunately, antibiotics are only effective against rarer bacterial infections. Furthermore, giving antibiotics to children at a young age can adversely affect their gut flora, putting them at risk of health conditions in the future. 

 

Remedies For Teething Pain

 

There are all kinds of wacky remedies out there for teething pain. But most of them are bunk. And even those that are not, come with costs. The FDA, for instance, warns parents against using teething gels that contain local anesthetics because of the risk of deadly rare side effects for kids two years and younger. 

 

Sending Them to School When They’re Infectious

 

If your child gets a disease, it is probably a bad idea to send them to school. 

 

Take pink-eye, for instance – a highly infectious condition that causes inflammation of the tissue in the eye socket. It spreads like wildfire and has an R-value of well over five.

 

It is probably a bad idea to even take them to the doctor’s office. Fortunately, you have other options, such as telehealth. 

 

But what is telehealth? It is like a Zoom call, but with your doctor. They can examine your child for potential infections and then provide you with a prescription, if necessary, based on their observations. 

 

Insisting On A CT Scan

CT scans are an essential technology for diagnosing illness when people get very sick. Doctors, for instance, often have to peer inside the bodies of cancer patients to map the extent of their tumors. 

 

CT radiation exposure for children, however, is a problem. High-energy particles can damage their DNA and stunt their development. The technology, therefore, should be reserved for only the most severe conditions. Otherwise, the costs can outweigh the benefits. 

 

Cooling A Fever

 

Parents worry when a child has a fever. Stories abound about how high temperatures can lead to coma. 

 

Moms and dads, though, need to understand that fever is actually a part of the body’s response to infection. By heating the internal environment, it speeds the action of the immune system and makes things less hospitable for bugs. 

 

If your child’s temperature rises above 103 F, then you will need to call a doctor. Any temperature above 104 F can have neurological side effects.