Grandparents took my daughter to A&E without letting us know

[2828r]

Am, I being unreasonable? I'll just set out the facts. The kids stayed out at their grandparents last weekend and went to a skate park. My daughter fell down some stairs and hurt her leg.

My wife had just finished a run of night shifts and we were expecting the kids back around 1:30. When they turned up at 2:30 my parents said they had taken my daughter to A&E to have her checked out, but hadn't told us as my wife had just finished nights and they didn't want to worry her.

My daughter was fine, just a little bruised and shaken by the experience. We later found out from her that she had fainted which caused the fall. My parents weren't aware of the fainting incident and just thought she'd had a clumsy moment.

We feel that if a child is taken to A&E, we should know about it straight away as grandparents don't hold parental responsibility and can't consent to treatment if required. Although our daughter was fine, children present differently to adults and tend to compensate very well then suddenly deteriorate, she could easily have had some other internal injury.

This is a fundamental disagreement, my parents think they were being considerate with my wife having just finished nights. We feel it's more important to be informed if an incident is serious enough to warrant a trip to A&E

We feel that if a child is taken to A&E, we should know about it straight away as grandparents don't hold parental responsibility and can't consent to treatment if required. Although our daughter was fine, children present differently to adults and tend to compensate very well then suddenly deteriorate, she could easily have had some other internal injury.

If consent had been required, they would have contacted you. Do you imagine that the hospital doesn't know about the difference in children's and adults' presentation and the possibility of internal injury unless parents tell them about it?

And do you think it is possible that, having managed to get you to adulthood, your parents are well aware of what may or may not be dangerous?

Your poor parents - they were just trying to be considerate and were exercising their judgment based on years of experience, their judgment was absolutely correct, and they still get blamed.

I can't believe people are finding this okay? Maybe none parente themselves.

Rubbish. Most of us actually trust our parents to care for our offspring as much as we do and put their interests and safety first. Not much point in calling until you have answers otherwise you are just creating unnecessary stress and worry, and there was nothing OP (or actually OPs wife since she's the only one with a phone apparently) could do that they couldn't do.

I see OP hasn't answered my question though.

What absolute nonsense. This would be justified if they hadn't taken OP's child to A&E. As it is, they were very conscientious.

Why didn’t the contact the OP- seems like they are full time stay home parent? A phone call from A&E would have been great as well. But I don’t honestly understand all the drama here from OP. If they want to know, just thank them and tell them for any such instances next time instead of blaming them that they they didn’t take off the jumper, they gave the first height chart, the OP has hidden anger from previous instead sa and just finding the way to berate them!

All the people saying oh what is procedure was needed and no parent was there and they would have not done etc. I pose a scenario; a child fell down from a big tree playing with their friends, no adult around except a women reading a book, now the child is unconscious, the woman takes the child to A&E, the doctors assess that they are fainted or if procedures are necessary, what do you think going to happen? Leave the kid dying/unconscious and not so the necessary procedures until they take consent? No! First comes the life of the kid here, not who brought them there and is parent is around.

They didn't hide anything. They told OP and his wife all about it.

I would have phoned En route to the hospital to let you know that was what was happening.

When your children go to university you are told nothing due to privacy issues which concerned me more to be honest.

Even if it was, say, the middle of the night?

Exactly this. They're obviously nice people, they just had a different take from you. I would ALWAYS want to know but I don't think what they did was wrong per se.

You and your wife sound awesome! In the future, I would just say no to them staying over at gp’s house.

Because they never actually treated anything they just checked her over? Only actual treatment needs signed consent from a parent/guardian. Based on her just attending with a responsible adult it’s not up to the hospital to contact the parents 🙄

If grandparents are looking after your daughter overnight then they need to be filled in on what is happening with her medication. It's easy enough to put a note in with her things.

YANBU. People don't take their children to A&E for a little harmless fall, if they thought bringing her to A&E was a good idea it's because it was serious enough to do so, and under those circumstances as parents you should have been informed. And you are quite right to state that if there had been something wrong with your child requiring further medical treatment grandparents can't consent. Personally I'd have been VERY upset, and you should talk to them and letting them know that in the future you want to be told regardless of convenience.

Yes! Even if it were 3am in the morning. Are you a parent? Because if you had a child you wouldn't be asking this...

Don't get me wrong, they are kind and generous and they love their grandchildren, but from day one they couldn't seem to grasp that they had their time as parents and constantly overstepped the mark.

You may not have intended this, it comes over as incredibly arrogant. Why not give them some credit for parenting experience?

Accidents happen, but pound to a penny, she wouldn't have fainted due to overheating if we were there because I'd tell her to take her heavy jumper off before doing physical exercise. So yes, we are pretty exhausted.

The other side of that coin is that you haven't managed to teach your daughter to be alert to this yourself. You don't know what temperatures were like at the skate park so you can't say you would certainly have told her to take her jumper off. You've said you haven't given your parents all the information about the effects of her medication, so that one is really on you.

Look, your parents made a judgment call that they would play safe and take her to A&E but it wasn't serious enough to justify worrying your wife and waking her up. The facts demonstrate that they were absolutely correct. Let it go.

Unacceptable. Meant with good intentions but very wrong to that. Especially as it wasn’t just an injury, she fainted which could happen again if (hopefully not!) it might be a medical condition.

Yes, I am a parent. If I didn't trust my parents to make a judgment call about things like this, I wouldn't let my child stay there. I would obviously expect to be told the next day, but not necessarily immediately.

My parents did exactly this. We had gone away for a very much needed one night break. They kindly took the children to the theatre and, on the way back, DD fell and banged her head. They felt they should take her to A&E on a precautionary basis but didn't want to spoil our break so didn't call us immediately. Like OP's child, DD was fine and they told us about it next day. We were grateful to them for being so careful.

On the other hand, when it's someone else's child you tend to play safe with things like this and take them to A&E where you might not take your own child.

OP's daughter was perfectly capable of consenting to treatment for herself.

This.

(…also, some of you obviously hate your parents, and it really shows…)

It sounds like your parents were coming from a good place, so I’d exercise a gentler approach here.

it’s fantastic that they were responsible enough, calm, able, composed, caring and sound of judgement enough to get your daughter checked out. I think that my parents would flap. Once, my son had a fever of 40 degrees when I left him for a few hours with them, to go to work. They took him to the park, as they didn’t even realise he was poorly. As they don’t spend much time with him (they live in a different city) they mistook his lethargy and lack of excitement upon my arrival, as his nature. So, from where I am coming from, I think I’d feel reassured that your daughter is under good care.

they absolutely should have told you and / or her mum, that they’d gone to a&e. You both know your daughter, her general pattern of behaviour and health / personality better than anyone and you need to know what’s happening, when it’s this important. Tell them that.

Well you have grandparents who have the kids to stay. They take them to a skate park. They identify a minor problem and deal with it immediately. The consciously decide that under the circumstances it is better to let you both rest rather than make a big deal out of something small.
They sound like the perfect grandparents. What more could you possibly want? Instead you're talking about internal injuries (as if she was in a car crash or something) and questioning their behaviour.
YABU. Be grateful for the fantastic support you have. And if you feel this strongly, just ask them to phone you next time there's an A&E visit. But don't push them away, they don't deserve it.

I think you’re very lucky to have such considerate parents. Yes, you would have been contacted if the child was so unwell she needed further medical attention. In reality medical staff know what they’re doing and if it was a life threatening injury they would just get in with doing what they need to do. Now you can go to primary care and see if you can find out why she fainted in the first place, but I’d say that going to be more difficult. Really don’t let it come between you and your parents. That’s just silly.

Mountains out of mole hills

If you don't like the care your parents provide don't use them as a free baby sitter.

They were doing you a favour and you are spitting your dummy out

I suspect in the moment their priority was to make sure your daughter was ok. Contacting you would have been an afterthought as they were likely to have been shaken up.

Had a similar situation with one of ours, whom the grandparents cared for whilst we were at work. They took decision to take child straight to hospital for treatment, but didn’t tell us until went to collect from theirs a couple of hours later. I did feel upset at the time that they hadn’t contacted us, but realised that it was a mixture of shock from the accident and not knowing for sure that they would be able to get hold of us (as both of us parents were in jobs where we did not always have immediate access to phone).

Did we trust them to look after our child again? Yes, because they showed that in an emergency their first response was to seek medical help. We did stress to them that should they ever be in a similar situation to try and contact us once at the hospital, just so we were aware of the situation. I would perhaps suggest this would be the way to move forward with the situation.

Now that so much more has been written, I'm pretty sure OP wasn't told about the medical check until it was over, because the grandparents dreaded his reaction.

Sounds like the grandparents are a positive feature in the child's life, balancing his controlling influence.

It's hard when children have health conditions, but they need to be allowed go grow up as normally as possible.

As long as everyone is safe, it isn't useful or normal to have to recruit internet opinion to 'prove' you 'right'.

The mention about being pipped to children's 'firsts' sounds competitive, controlling and unhealthy.

Your parents did what they thought was best - took your daughter to A & E and let you know when it had been confirmed that the child was perfectly ok. They didn't want to bother your wife who had done a night shift. They were parents long before (and for many years longer than) you were. Give them some credit.