Friends don’t believe in vaccinations or calpol

[Campingcarryon]

I have some friends who are new parents and have declared that their child won’t be having any childhood vaccinations and that they also don’t believe in giving kids calpol or other medicines either.

Honestly, I didn’t know what to say when they said that to me- I haven’t come accross people who were anti calpol before 🤦‍♀️

Aibu to think it’s quite irresponsible if your child is ill not to get their temp down with calpol and that you are risking things getting a lot worse, especially with really small babies that get ill and deteriorate really fast. Let alone the whole anti vax position.

Honestly, I am still really baffled by their position to be honest. I think it’s really weird and irresponsible not to want your child to feel well 🤪

You'll be really pissed off when they smugly tell you that their child never needed vaccination because they've never contacted measles etc, with no hint of understanding that they've benefitted from the herd immunity that you provided by vaccinating your own children!
Unless their child had a medical reason not to be vaccinated, those parents are putting pregnant women, babies and immune compromised people at risk.
I don't think people should be forced to vaccinate and generally I believe it's a personal decision, especially with new vaccines where there is no data for potential long term effects. But for childhood vaccination, which we know to be much safer than not having them, I just don't get why they would take the risk.

That’s borderline child abuse.

Lay on thick your experiences with febrile convulsions. It might cause a tinkle of thought.

Poor child 🥺

Plenty of people don't use Calpol and use other ways or homeopathy etc to bring down a temperature. We stopped using Calpol after our second and actually our kids hardly get ill now but if they do get ill it lasts a day and no more than that. Finding other ways to treat has been good and led us to a healthier for the body lifestyle. No point judging others. It's not a big deal.

There are some cultures where historically there has been a mistrust of medicine and doctors. Sometimes this is for very good reason as in those places doctors have historically been unnecessarily interventionist or have had a terrible bed-side manner. Or, there is more if a focus on natural remedies or letting your body do its natural thing to fight off infection. A lot of the time even adults do not take the medicines they do not give their children. I do not mean to generalise as I know this is changing with every generation, and people aren't homogenous in their views. But, anecdotally, some of my friends from ex-USSR countries hold these views.

I can see some pros because I'm sure there have been studies to say that the use of painkillers in fever can alter the body's natural infection-fighting efficacy. And, just because something is natural doesn't mean it works less as some modern medicines are based on plants/natural remedies anyway. But, I do agree with previous posters that dogmatically not giving your child painkillers when they need them, and when you have the option, is cruel.

I had a friend who wouldn’t give her kids calpol either and was very proud of the fact. Her kids were also unvaccinated and ‘unschooled’ ie feral.

My older child was in and out of hospital as a child with repeated chest infections/bronchiolitis etc and so I guess having had that experience & knowing that modern medicine saved their life on several occasions, I am more appreciative of stuff like painkillers, steroids and antibiotics.

They now have asthma too and actually, while we use steroid inhalers etc- I have explored medical herbalism to support their health too. So I am not averse to alternative medicine, but I do believe in modern medicine too!

When I was young and wanted to know something, I had to trek 15 minutes to the library, think up search terms for the card catalogue, and eventually find books that had been through the processes of proof reading, editing and publication. It wasn’t a perfect system but overall the balance of available information tended towards well researched and accredited.

As a first time mum, drying to make sense of ds’ asd diagnosis I read a huge amount of material online, including claims that paracetamol was linked to the development of autism.

And that was before your internet search history determined your search results. Now you can find yourself in an invisible rabbit hole, getting more and more if the same type of results and not even being aware that there’s other information out there. It’s very scary.

It’s entirely reasonable to be cautious about what we put in the bodies of our babies. We’re all making uninformed choices based on our trust in the knowledge sources we have available.

We’re living in a really scary post-truth world. I feel really strongly that the best thing you can do is listen and talk - and resist the impulse to shut down and walk away. Instead of debating it online (or as well as debating online ) debate with them. It’s the only way to expose each other to ideas outside the invisible walls of our google searches.

I have a relative (by marriage) who banned all TV for her under 10yo child, on basis "it causes ADHD". This was a highly educated person who would never shun vaccinations.

But yeah, people believe weird things!!

No Tetanus vacc is the one that scares me. Cross fingers the child will stay well.

Boring loonies who think reading Facebook nonsense is a substitute for a personality.

Get new friends. I suspect with anti-intellectual views like that they're not exactly sparkling conversationalists.

I had to cut of a friendship because she'd leave her child in pain, while she would dose herself up. She had strange ideas about children not eating cold food. She came from a hot country and didn't have constant electricity growing up. It took her child being hospitalised with a severe throat infection and SS getting involved.

@MrsHuntGeneNotJeremyObviously

You'll be really pissed off when they smugly tell you that their child never needed vaccination because they've never contacted measles etc, with no hint of understanding that they've benefitted from the herd immunity that you provided by vaccinating your own children! Unless their child had a medical reason not to be vaccinated, those parents are putting pregnant women, babies and immune compromised people at risk. I don't think people should be forced to vaccinate and generally I believe it's a personal decision, especially with new vaccines where there is no data for potential long term effects. But for childhood vaccination, which we know to be much safer than not having them, I just don't get why they would take the risk.

Spot on.

How any parent can leave their child exposed to the risk of a life-threatening or life-changing illness when it could be prevented is beyond my understanding.

I have an acquaintance like this. Exhausting listening to them rant on and on with their "evidence and proof"

Children can be quite miserable when they have a fever, when I have a temperature I feel awful and take paracetamol. Paracetamol is an antipyretic, and is used for that in hospitals too. Its a good pain relief for kids as well. it can be used for either.

Maybe some parents over use Calpol, - but I doubt that's because their kids have a fever!

OP your friends sound annoying, arrogant and irresponsible. I hope their child doesnt end up paying a terrible price.

Herbs are drugs, he'll be drugging that child before its first birthday haha

@FedUpAtHomeTroels

They'll soon be looking for Calpol when the pfb gets that first illness that includes a fever.

That is assuming that the baby makes it past whooping cough.

OP, you say 'Chinese herbalist'. Are they Chinese or is it a white man doing that Orientalism woo shit ? Because the Chinese schedule routinely vaccinates against more diseases than the UK, including BCG at birth.

Being Anti-Vax is neglectful, it I do actually agree with limiting use of anti-pyretics such as paracetamol/Ibuprofen. Having a fever isn’t an illness, it’s your bodies defence and natural treatment of an infection. I will only treat if they have a bad headache, or aren’t tolerating fluids etc.

@50ShadesOfCatholic

Herbs are drugs, he'll be drugging that child before its first birthday haha

Yep and some are poisonous too, I have always stayed well away from these "herbalist" people, some of what they sell is dangerous.

I hope their child never has a perforated eardrum, penicillin and Calpol was the only relief then.

@NeverDropYourMooncup white man be practising oriental medicine 😬

I don’t think calpol is always necessary for teething, it totally depends on how your baby reacts to teething (my DC weren’t really arsed) but it’s definitely vital for high temperatures and it would be given in hospital if they had one to prevent febrile convulsions. Not sure why they’d deny their child something as basic as paracetamol, it’s one of the safest drugs in the world.

I do know what many anti-Vaxxers are like though and there’s just no getting through to them. A former friend of mine was one, it’s partially why I ended the friendship. They’re always full to the brim of crazy conspiracy theories they’ve heard about on YouTube.

[quote Campingcarryon]@NeverDropYourMooncup white man be practising oriental medicine 😬[/quote]
Now, there's a surprise.

The coverage for vaccinations in China is 99% as of 2019. 100% for BCG. Which will include the children of yer actual Chinese Chinese Herbalists.

People are bizarre. A girl I have on Facebook posted she wouldn’t be having her whooping cough vaccine during pregnancy as she had a suspicion they would secretly give her the covid one

both is pretty awful. but to deny a child pain relief when it's needed is outright cruel.