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 🤪

I mean I’ve given calpol a handful of times in five years 🤷‍♀️
I’m not anti it, just I wouldn’t call it an essential thing for me to own. Never considered taking it on holiday for instance. Always found my DC just breastfed more / all night with teething pain which seemed to help more than calpol.

When both mine were babies, I pretty much gave up on Calpol as trying to get them to actually swallow it made them more distressed than not giving them any, and they always spat out too much to get anywhere near a full dose. Breastfeeding seemed to be more effective in terms of keeping them comfortable when they were unwell. But that was my experience with my particular kids, and we always had a bottle of Calpol in the house for occasional use. Actually, as I still do as even though my eldest is a teenager she still hates swallowing tablets.

@MissyB1

Well some would say the same about western medicine.

Chinese herbalists have their followers, I would not dismiss them outright. I have found great relief in alternative therapies notably Reiki and craniosacral therapy.

But the anti-vax stance I find difficult to tolerate, basically they piggyback on the goodwill of others to serve their own agendas.

I don’t understand someone who would rather their child SUFFER in pain that give them a very small dose of perfectly safe paracetamol.

Wtf??? I fucking bet when your friends have a hang over they take a couple or when they’ve pulled their back or injured themselves they’ve popped an ibuprofen or two.

Absolutely fucking lunacy.

Willing to risk your child dying or losing a limb from meningitis or sepsis or any other really common and life threatening/ impacting virus.

The shouldn’t be allowed to procreate.

How new to parenting are they? It's all very well saying they are anti calpol and anti vaccination when they haven't actually been challenged by an unwell child - tends to be a different story when their child becomes unwell and unhappy.

I have friends who were anti-vaccination for children but were quick off the mark to get the covid jab. I keep quiet although I inwardly roll my eyes.

Chinese herbalist? Don't they prescribe powdered rhino horn for erectile dysfunction....?
The anti-vaccine stance is bad enough but choosing not to ease a child's pain or fever is verging on abuse.

It’s cruel to make children suffer because a parent dosnt want to give them pain relief.

As for the vaccines, I’m on the side of parents who don’t vaccinate their children should be charged with child abuse.

I don’t understand someone who would rather their child SUFFER in pain that give them a very small dose of perfectly safe paracetamol.

They probably won’t

I’m London born and bred but had DD overseas and paracetamol for babies isn’t seen as the panacea it is in the UK.

Sadly these things go in circles.

People used to see the thousands of kids suffering the life-long effects or deaths from measles, polio etc, so they rushed to get the vaccines.
Now the diseases are so uncommon to us that people have the privilege of thinking its "just" measles, like it's the same as having a cold.

If it becomes a common-enough attitude (like its starting to in some small communities in America), then people will get a nasty and sad shock and we'll all rush back to get vaccinated again, for a while....

We didn’t really do paracetamol here either, as with PPs mine just breastfed more. I did have paracetamol suppositories in, which I must have used max twice, when fever was approaching 39 overnight, but during the day she just breastfed. Also we had a paediatrician who was a fan of letting a fever run if under 38.5° and under and no history of convulsions.

On the whole we tend not to use a lot of over the counter medicines in our house as many are pointless and nothing more than a marketing ploy and the others that do work aren’t entirely free of side effects. We do use pain relief for things like headaches but only if nothing else works.

We did do vaccinations though.

@babba2014

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.

absolutely no issue with exploring other ways to treat but homeopathy is absolute roaring bollocks. You're very lucky to have healthy kids.

www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1800-studies-later-scientists-conclude-homeopathy-doesnt-work-180954534/

@StormTreader

Sadly these things go in circles.

People used to see the thousands of kids suffering the life-long effects or deaths from measles, polio etc, so they rushed to get the vaccines.
Now the diseases are so uncommon to us that people have the privilege of thinking its "just" measles, like it's the same as having a cold.

If it becomes a common-enough attitude (like its starting to in some small communities in America), then people will get a nasty and sad shock and we'll all rush back to get vaccinated again, for a while....

yes, it's really worrying. I managed to contract measles as an adult in 2004 because of a huge dip in vaccinations. It was absolutely terrible and left me with long term side effects. It makes me rage.

I have friends like this - it's all homeopathic remedies and no vaccinations. I have definitely seen Calpol in their house as the DC git older though. I try not to get into it with them. They love quite a long way away so I only see them a couple of times a year.

Funnily enough, they have family in a different European country so have both had the Covid vaccine so that they are allowed to go and visit them. They are only anti-vaxx when it suits them.

Give it six months. Kid'll be calpol-Ed and vaxxed to within an inch of its life possibly without woo father even knowing

It’s not usually necessary to treat a fever. It’s not ok to not treat pain.

The anti-vax stance is purely negligent parenting.

I’m an ICU dr who’s had paracetamol three times in my life and has never had antibiotics. You give medications only when needed - for some kids it will be common and for others rare. It’s never ok to decide from the start you won’t treat things that need treating, or to decide you won’t take reasonable steps to prevent serious illness.

I don’t waste my friendship on shitty parents.

Chinese herbalist? Don't they prescribe powdered rhino horn for erectile dysfunction....?

If they were using any kind of animal products they would not be herbalists.

How tedious of them.
They do realise that they can only cherry pick their health care because of the selflessness of others, right?

I followed all vaccination programs but I do avoid calpol when possible.

It’s a last resort for us rather than the first thing we reach for.

Don’t believe in giving medicines? I wonder what they would do if in the position too many of us find ourselves in whereby if they don’t Medicate the child doesn’t live?

I fully get not giving calpol and the likes on a whim but they need to be kept as sensible options

If they are new parents, the likelihood is they haven’t come across a situation where they need to use paracetamol. Perhaps that will change with time. In all honesty, I think it is probably overused by many people so it’s not always a bad thing to not want to use it much. But to deny a child who is in pain/unwell a bit of medicine to feel better is rather cruel.

No words for the lack of vaccines. Why you wouldn’t want to prevent your precious child from contracting a preventable disease is beyond me.

Idiots. And how unkind to leave a baby in pain unnecessarily.

Some friends of ours decided not to vaccinate their daughter. She was about 6 months old when she caught Rotavirus and had to be hospitalised for severe dehydration as a result of horrendous D&V for weeks.

Funnily enough they decided to vaccinate her shortly afterwards...

Lots of parents are like this with small babies. People are just as conscious of the food they feed their children (organic, water no additives) as they are with the chemicals they pump into them through medication.
Gut health can be deteriorated via some medication if given too much regularly. Delaying or declining vaccines is still a parent choice as they have to deal with the consequences following any decisions made.
It would be interesting to see how the children who have/havent compare with hospital admission, I think it's 50/50.
Calpol has lots of chemicals in and should only be used as a last resort for pain relief. Best to rule out alternatives such as rehydration for headaches with water. It's not meant to regulate temperature but does as part of its healing.

I know two sets of parents like this. Both massively judgmental of others and hugely reactive to any kind of judgment themselves. Both massive recreational drug users but that's different to evidence-based medicine as it's natural. Slavery concerns don't apply to Class 1 drugs because. Weirdly to me, one leapt at the COVID remedies that are not evidence based, HCQ and Ivermectin?, for adults because Trump and QANON and because the medical establishment said these didn't work so they must work. Regrettably, I have more social contact with them than ideal though , to be fair, I doubt I'm their cup to tea even though I smile and bite my tongue more than they do.

If it was my child i d want them protected as much as scientifically possible.

I wasn't vaccinated as a child and had measles at 11 I can still remember the hallucinations from the illness.

I decided to get all mine at age 17.