To find "mummy knows best" is stupid when it comes to medical things?

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My cousin's little boy (nearly 2) has a rash all over. Her Mum took him to Dr who said it's a viral rash. Cue loads of photos all over FB of his rash, and lots of anguish from Mum going "Dr says it's viral rash, but I'm not convinced!" And responses if "mummy knows best, hunni, take him to the dr's again babe"
She comes back the next day and again plasters her boys face and rash all over FB, and goes "Mummy does know best! I was right, he's got Hand Foot and Mouth!"
With lots of supportive responses going "you were right to trust your gut, mummy knows best!"

Excuse me.

HFAM rash IS A FUCKING VIRAL RASH.

The Dr was right the first time...

Mummy didn't know best, just thinks she does because the viral rash has a name...

🙄

Ugh

My two children have been ill on numerous occasions. Despite having been mocked by others with a similar attitude to yours OP, I have always been validated when returned to doctors, going to hospital etc. I’m 12.5 years I have not been wrong yet.

It's about pattern spotting. Doctors are (usually) great at telling bog standard post viral rash from say meningitis because they've seen plenty of both. But parents are going to be better at spotting out of character behaviour in their kids because they see them the whole time. A good doctor takes account of both.

None of this would be so high stakes if it was easier to get a GP appointment. There's no point in saying "give it a few days and see how it develops" if the next available appointment is in three weeks. And by the same token, I sometimes wonder how well GPs factor in the fact that by the time they see anyone these days, the time for a self limiting illness to have cured itself is usually past.

YABU. Mother’s know their kids best. They are best able to spot something is wrong. Doctors are the ones who know the medicine best.

DS had a really severe case of chicken pox at 6 months old. He got over the peak, started getting better then went downhill again so I took him to GP. I was dismissed with one look, no proper examination and “it’s chicken pox” and sent home. Next day I could see puss oozing out his ears. Back to GP course of antibiotics and he was fine. I knew it was more than chicken pox.

I know the difference between a run of the mill toddler illness and illness that warrants medical attention. I know by a combination of the following: knowledge of what my child is like, and their energy levels throughout the day, how they sound when they speak, how warm they feel (I can tell the difference between 'a bit of a temperature' and 'a raging temp' just by feeling their head (I do use a thermometer too, which always proves i am right) and I also know by smell - I know that sounds odd - my children smell different when they are unwell. And depending how strong that smell is I know how unwell they are.

Having said all that, I wouldn't hesitate to take them to the GP if my senses told me that they needed it, and would fully cooperate with their diagnosis and treatment.

Mine ended up in hospital for a month with a misdiagnosed "virus". Had to battle an A&E consultant to get bloods done. I was right.
Don't dismiss parents instinct.

Not medical details but there's been stories of children sent away from hospitals with tragic outcomes.

There are also thousands of times where "mummy" has been sent away, convinced they know better, and the child recovered from whatever minor thing they had.

When ds1 was in NICU I just knew something was wrong even though the drs said he was fine. On my insistence they ran tests and sure enough he was developing a infection that they caught very early.

You didn't "just know" you thought. And in many circumstances like that there wouldn't have been any problem at all. It isn't intuitive it's simply the stopped clock being right twice a day.

There have been a few times I've known best about my own health as well as that of my children. Recently I had a doctor ask me if there was anything I suspected as a diagnosis for my DD as she didn't want to miss anything 🧐

A regular GP is by no means an expert.

PP have asked why bother to take them to a HCP if you're not going to trust their advice. Well, you need to get in to the system. You need access to referrals to specialists, you need prescriptions written and also you hope maybe, just maybe, this one will know what they're doing.

YABtotallyU OP. Many many kids with Type 1 diabetes (to give one, very personal example) are only diagnosed because of the instinct and persistence of their parents. My own instincts were dismissed until I sat down in front of our GP and said "He has Type 1, do a finger prick test." His BG levels were too high for the meter to read, but we avoided Diabetic Ketoacidosis because I listened to my instinct and made them accept that mother really does know best.

My experience in NICU with my premature twins was the total opposite.
The well trained doctors and nurses kept asking me "what do you think mum? Are the twins normally like this? Is this normal for the twins?"

I wanted to scream - "I don't bloody know! They are a week old and I haven't even got to hold one yet"!!

As others have said, parents know what is 'normal' for their kid, or what might be serious I reckon. My DD has a history of being incredibly smiley and upbeat even when v poorly. We got fobbed off by 3 sets of Dr's when she had a serious infection because she was 'too happy'. When she finally got diagnosed the infection had spread and we were blue lighted for emergency surgery. As parents we know now that because she looks 'happy' doesn't mean she can't have something serious so we keep pushing if we are worried

In your example tho, yeah the kid had a viral rash

I disagree. When my ds was 2 we were told by an a &e Dr and a Gp that he had a viral infection and rashes are common with it. The rash turned black. He had eczema hyperticum (which is a type of viral eczema) whilst it is rare it is one of the few dermatological emergencies. He was taken to hospital and started on antiviral medication. I had been fobbed off as an overprotective mum and my dh who took our son to the Gp after we had been to the hospital sad he thought I was being neurotic as I wasn't happy with the advice given by two Dr's and that as a pharmacist I didn't know better than them (I agree I don't but I know my own son). It was on the third visit that he was diagnosed and I raised the name of the condition with the gp who confirmed that I was right. I remembered learning about it in a lecture years ago at uni, that it is rare and we were unlikely to see it in practice. My dh has since apologised several times for this and trusts my instincts. It made me stringer in my resolute and as a hcp I always encourage parents to seek further help if treatment isn't making an improvement or the advice given isn't working for their child.

Don't your just love the ones that like to plaster every insignificant thing they do over social media.

Mummy needed a doctor to tell her it was a virus. Mummy didn't believe it so went back and the doctor gave the virus a name. Mummy now feels superior whilst looking a complete idiot to anyone who has a brain. Cue shouts and likes from the fawning idiot friends of mummy.

Rinse and repeat a million times over - the joys of facebook

Yabu I'm aware of so so many times when hcps - mainly gps - have got it wrong very often because they are instantly dismissive of a mother's knowledge of their child.

a child's temp can be high for them but still fall within normal range so would be discounted

Yes this has been an issue in my family too and it annoys me on the COVID advice that they have a specific temp measurement classified as a high temp, that may not be high for some and very high for others the average range for normal temps is exactly that an average meaning a fair amount of the population fall outwith that average

In my family a couple of us tend to the cool side - so a "normal" temp is actually a fever for us and a couple run hot meaning a fever for others is a normal temp for them. The number of times the mothers of those concerned or they themselves as adults have had to explain this to hcps - who should know better - is ridiculous

Very often poor assessment/treatment of children by hcps is due to an extension of medical misogyny (which can be from women hcps too) as it's mostly women - mum - who take them to be seen

My own family has experienced several incidents of this type inc at least one that if my mum hadn't been really pushy would likely have proven fatal for the child concerned (complication from measles, rare but does happen)

At this point I now really strongly feel that hcps that are of the "that's just a paranoid/hypochondriac woman I'm dealing with" type are generally poor hcps anyway and I don't like dealing with them even for minor matters

Your cousin wasn't wrong and the gp was somewhat wrong in this case I agree with pps this says more about how you feel about the cousin (and I have several I don't get along with myself so I get that) than it does about your understanding of the situation that occurred

My own dds disability was missed by multiple hcps over a period of almost 12 years in different health authority areas. When we did eventually get a referral to a specialist it was thanks to a locum gp LISTENING to me

In this case part of the problem is how specialist referrals are administrated within the nhs I believe as in gps are discouraged from making them in a number of ways - one of which is it negatively impacts the budget of the practice (gps aren't fully part of the nhs they're more like sub contractors gp surgeries are essentially private businesses)

This is something that desperately needs to be addressed as gps are not specialists

I sometimes wonder how well GPs factor in the fact that by the time they see anyone these days, the time for a self limiting illness to have cured itself is usually past.

Yep!

They're very keen at the moment to get us to understand the lack of appointments is due to lack of staff and funding - ok we get that

But as you rightly say they need to also acknowledge and understand that this means that people who DO make and get and attend an appointment are very likely doing so as they have serious concerns and as you say by the time the appointment occurs most self limiting illnesses can be ruled out

So many problems with primary healthcare at the moment which is not to say we need a different system we need the current one properly funded and supported and working!

I include in that addressing the issue of medical misogyny which I accept isn't a purely Uk issue it's worldwide but we can't change worldwide we can change Uk

“mummy knows best, hunni, take him to the dr's again babe”

christ that’s an infantile way to express yourself…

When DD broke her arm, the nurse asked how I knew and the answer was by the way she cried. They took that as evidence that she had hurt herself (and there was a break. But by the time we were at the hospital, she was just rather clingy).

On the other hand, I missed that other DD had impetigo as it looked exactly like an infected insect bite she had had previously.

We know if our children aren't right, but not necessarily exactly what's wrong with them

When my ds was 4 months old an out of hours dr told me I was an anxious parent and he’s screaming I’m stressing him I was only 20 years old and would’ve taken him home because I believed the hcp my mum was with me who told me to take him to a&e he was admitted to the hdu for 2 weeks and stopped breathing multiple times that night I regret so much not complaining but after 2 weeks in hospital and learning the multiple things wrong with my son I didn’t. Sometimes mother’s do know best Andy most hcp know that a mother she word does carry some weight as they literally birthed the little person and spend 24 hours a day with them!

I have met several doctors who all say they trust a mothers intuition most of the time.

I'm a lecturer in a medical school ( I'm a medical scientist rather then medical doctor) and our students are thought about the importance of mothers intuition. A friend who is in her 30s so qualified about 10 years ago has highlighted the same. The dismissive attitude toward mothers is one that is being trained out of doctors because as others have said primary carers will pick up on small changes the doctors wont see especially as babies and kids are often not able to effectively communicate themselves.

I was told by my gp that babies get sick it's normal, babies get reflux it's normal, babies get excema it's normal, babies doing 12 poos a day is normal...... my son is allergic to 6 allergens. My doctor only referred us to a pediatric dietician after I stopped using my name and referred to myself as dr a. Jones. This is not ok and they shouldnt just brush you off.

I was convinced something was wrong I my pregnancy, I was treated horrendously by the sonographer, who told me she would get me sectioned if I kept going on at her. My baby was born with all her bones broken, and she couldn't breath, and had some deformities where bones had broken and reset that should have been picked up on scans. She died 2 weeks later.

Another time I went to the doctors every day for 4 days because I knew my dd was really poorly, I was dismissed, on the 4th night I dialled 999 because I knew there was something really wrong, despite not much change in her symptoms. She had strep A, pneumonia, empyema and sepsis, if I had left it until I went to the doctors again she would have died. Her organs had already started shutting down. She was in hospital for a couple of months and had a major op, but thankfully is OK now.

I will 100% trust my instinct over medical professionals every time.

I think mother’s do know best a lot of the time. I know of two mums in our extended family who pushed very hard for their worries to be taken seriously and basically saved their kids lives. One was appendix which had already burst but medical professionals were still saying it’s just a virus.

@elliejjtiny

My son's paediatrician always says that she is the medical expert and I am the expert on my son so we both need to listen to each other.

Good advice.

A mother's instinct is a proven thing. It's important, and quite often right.

You either don't like your cousin or don't like that she wittered about it all over Facebook.

I do think mums know best with their kids- even their older children. They see and pick up on everything, they're tuned in.

My mum pushed for me to see a different Dr. and have tests and was adamant the Pill was part of the problem after our GP refused to lift a finger to help me as a teen. The pill this Dr had v recently prescribed me was actually poisoning my liver as a teen. She assumed - and said in front of me without even examining me properly, that I was milking getting over the flu to get off school. In reality I was failing to pick up and recover from the flu because my body was poisoned!

New Dr listened to both of us- including mum saying she knew what I was like with my grades ( proud high achiever)and how I normally recovered from illnesses and how she just knew something was wrong. The new Dr agreed and sorted it before too much damage was done.

Mum fought for me when I hadn't the strength to argue for myself. I don't blame OPs cousin for wanting a more precise diagnosis.

Isn't the real issue here that in the UK, we don't have direct access to paediatric care (like in Europe or US), but have to battle through the overstretched GP or A&E system?

But why address the real issues here OP, when they would get in the way of your misogyny.