Why is a trip to the walk-in centre a family outing?

[freeAnneBoleyn]

For some?

I went yesterday. Looked full to bursting when I came in, not a single free chair. Looked to be a lot of families with one sick/injured member, with both parents and other children in attendance. Why? If you have two parents why in God’s name would you drag your other child to sit amongst lurgy ridden patients for four hours and have to worry about keeping them amused as well?!

I eventually got a chair when someone else got called up- I had a fractured shoulder it turned out so not desperately ill obviously but still in pain and was anticipating, correctly as it turned out, a very very long wait.

Worst was family of five opposite- one feverish looking child asleep on mum’s lap, two older children and a dad. He’d brought sweets and sandwiches for everyone but the kids were bored shitless which led to the inevitable handing over of a phone to mess around on with the horrible pingy sounds of the game they played audible to everyone. Another toddler was left to just roam about, and started running up and down.

It made for an even more unpleasant waiting experience for people who are in pain and sick, exposing healthy children to germs, and bloody boring for them too.

I am NOT judging any parent that had no choice to bring other children along, but if there are two of you...why do it??

We have 1 car. That is not unusual, but not a reason for a load of bored kids to wait hours.

I don’t know.. When ds2 broke his arm at a family party, his dad drove us to the hospital, I sat and comforted him in the back of the car, ds1 came with as he was with us anyway. So that was four of us for one injury, and I have to admit I didn’t think much of it? I wouldn’t have let them disturb others though, or take chairs from actual patients, which are I guess what would annoy people more than their mere presence surely?

Why do you think tha posters should need to justify their actions to you though OP?

That's the bit I don't get.

There is a reason I have tried to present an alternative view > due to something that happened due to a similar thread and a person with mental health issues who really took what they read to heart > which you would say well that's not your problem and no it isnt. But sometimes people read this stuff and there can be unintended consequences.

Sounds like parents evenings at my kids school- whole families come with 3/4 kids and have a picnic whilst waiting to see the teachers. Its beyond me why one parent can't go with the child who the parents evening is for and then relay their kids progress to the other parent!

It's not just this thread but when I see threads that have a very dogmatic statement of it's rude / selfish / out of order to do X and you must not do it, I remember this situation. Poeple say "use common sense" but when people are ill in that way common sense isn't always at the fore.

So that's why I have been banging on is becasue I remember this situation.

The real problem here isn't who's attending, I think,but their behaviour in what is a medical waiting area.

People are worried, in pain, scared, tired - and for them, having rowdy children running around, audio playing on phones, loud conversations about banal shit, non sick people taking up chairs so I'll people have to stand.. it's all too much. What is an annoying lack of social manners in normal circumstances becomes beyond a joke in that environment.

THAT isn't bugbear in this - I don't care if granny and her dog rock up to offer support to an I'll person, but let injured people sit down in a quiet, calmer space FFS.

Both parents go with ds because a teenager with severe learning disabilities, asd, challenging behaviour and in pain is too much for one person to manage in a public place. If one of us wasn't available then a member of staff would have to stay with us.

It happens a lot. Unnecessarily in the majority of cases. That becomes apparent from reading through this thread 😳😳😳

RedWine that was posted 5 mins after the previous post did you even read it? So it can't be an unfortunate xpost.

People are so set in their ideas that everyone else is wrong that it seems sometimes they don't read posts properly.

Why are so many people on MN hell bent on telling others off? And then when called saying "OH not that person obv but EVERYONE ELSE IS DEFINTIELY WRONG".

It's so mean spirited.

The spectacular missing of the point is still going on, yet more posts about genuine reasons for families going to medical facilities when it couldn't be more clear that the issue is with hangers on with no need to be there taking up waiting spaces meant for those who are the ones needing treatment.

I am NOT judging any parent that had no choice to bring other children along, but if there are two of you...why do it

Dunno. Unless one parent can't drive but you could still drop off and take the other child(ren) off somewhere else until the sick person had been seen.

Still amazes me how many people make the supermarket a family outing as well. Most kids hate it so why subject them to it when you can either send one parent or use online shopping?

Drives me nuts when we bring a child back from theatre and about 6 people are around the bed. Give them some privacy ffs!

Very few of the posters who have said they have had to haul the whole families in had a justifiable reason for doing so tbh.

Meh. As you aren't the God of Who Can Attend A&E or Walk-Ins, I frankly don't care whether or not you feel it's "justifiable."

As it so happens, we're usually not in the general waiting room if we go in- I'm either huddled in the hallway outside the waiting room, trying to keep 2 autistic dcs from falling apart and going into spectacular meltdown or huddled in a side room or office (if the staff can find one for us to wait separately in) again trying to keep 2 autistic dcs from falling apart.

I don't remember ever looking around at waiting rooms and thinking "should this person be here? should any of their family be here?" Not my business. Perhaps it's having two children with "invisible disabilities" - I've learned to realise that what you see on the surface isn't always the whole story.

A majority of this thread is just judging and unsupportive nastiness.

YANBU. I saw it in the walk-in centre last weekend, not just parents and kids but grandparents too. Families of 6 or 7 at 7.45am on a Sunday! At first I assumed they’d all got ill with the same thing but nope, one kid with a sore eye, another with a cough. One woman came in with three kids alone and clearly said to the receptionist, “we are all ill but my son is worse than the rest of us, if you have to see us all separately please see him first.” They were, sensibly directed to another waiting room where he could lie down and they were seen together. The rest of the families of 4- 8 (!) all seemed to be there with one person.

It seemed like a family day out for a couple of families! With them all nipping to the cafe and vending machines and coming back laden with snacks and playing games, kids running riot etc. The man next to me was angry I wasn’t entertaining his little boy who kept kicking me and whacking me with his coat. I had the flu and and a burst peritonsillar abscess ffs, I couldn’t even sit and keep my eyes open let alone act as babysitter for a complete strangers child.

I’ve experienced this before. Turned up to hospital with a suspected broken finger covered in bruising all down one side of body having fallen off my bike pretty hard. The waiting room had whole groups of families taking up chairs.

None of them offered me a seat and I didn’t ask thinking that they must be able to see I’m injured and thus if they won’t get up or parents won’t make them then if I asked it may turn into a row which I didn’t need at that time as I was feeling shit. So I ended up standing whilst they partook in a family outing in A&E.

YANBU if there is no need to have everyone with you...don't.
My godson is autistic And when he has his appointments he needs mum and dad ( or a second person he is close to ) with him to help care for him in that environment, so in instances like that it's completely understandable, but I don't understand why you would have the whole family with you unless it was necessary.

It;s the same in Children's A&E. There are some people that think a trip to A&E is an outing, especially on a Friday or Saturday night and then proceed to bring the extended family. The child will have some very minor ailment such as a slight pryrexia that a spoonful of Calpol would solve.

I have seen a mum, dad and baby come in together, they then phone aunts/uncles/grandparents who also 'call in', often bringing kebabs or McDonalds and treating it like a social event. They are the type that spend the whole time on the phone, telling distant friends and family that X is in hospital whilst the other children run riot. They also expect the doctor to wait for them checking in on FB before they answer any questions. It must be an attention thing.

*pyrexia

Why are people bringing super markets into this, saying the same applies there are not (I hope) injured and ill people in the supermarket, unable to sit because seats are taken by hale and hearty hangers-on.

Because they are thinking of other situations that they see as similar.

You do not see them as similar.

Different people think differently, see. That's humans for you.

That mention of childrens A&E reminded me of something!

I was in and out of childrens hosp during secondary school > from age 12. Stayed for 1 or 2 or 3 weeks at a time. Lots of surgery, very painful. I was at a specialist childrens hosp so quite a long way from home.

Lots of the kids had family there a lot > one boy in particular he was the youngest of 10 children or something and his mum and dad were there every day with lots of siblings. He had a long term brain issue and was quite a bit older > he'd been coming there for years so they let him stay in teh childrens hosp even though he was a bit old (18). I think they were saying he'd have to go to grown up hosp next time.

Anyway I thought that was nice.

My mum, OTOH didn't come to see me once. Not once! My dad came quite a lot. But my mum didn't come nor my brother.

Yay? They weren't cluttering teh place up, very sensible, and admirable behaviour, yes? And the boy with the brain issue > his family were in the wrong and awful and selfish...?

Nothing I don’t know what it is about your posting style but I find it quite tricky to understand your point.

Anyway, parents visiting a child after surgery is quite plainly not what the post was about.

Others have been criticising families for being on wards, plenty.

Just remembered that from so many years ago when i was a child! Reminded by the mention of childrens a&e.