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

OP, I hope you have now made an app't with your GP to get to the bottom of the fainting episode.

As to taking her to A&E, they should have rung you both to explain what had happened and that was where they were taking her... then the decision whether to go there would have been down to you both.

Classic mumsnet drama this is!

The kid was fine

There seems to be quite a lot of anxiety in your second post OP and I wonder if that is impacting your judgment a little?

It isn't particularly notable to have to take dc to a&e, children are often accident prone. While you have been lucky to avoid this up to now either having to take them occasionally or not isn't indicative of the quality of care they are receiving.

Your dd is of the age that even with ADHD learning some natural consequences of not looking after herself may actually be useful for her in the long term.

You are correct, there is a lot of anxiety, and a lot of exhaustion too. After we adopted them 10 years ago an awful lot of things came to light which shall we say social services weren't forthright about. There former foster care had been neglectful and the social worker put in a complaint, They arrived in wet clothes and all there possessions were covered in mould. it took 5 days of baths to get the smell out of their hair, and an incredible amount of bleach for their toys. They both had bad eczema from all the time in damp clothes. Their diet had consisted completely of processed finger food, (garlic sausage for breakfast) to the extent they were both severely constipated with stretched bowels (That's taken about 10 years to sort our with diet and medication). They were both doubly incontinent and my daughter wet 7 full changes of clothes a day. At 3 and a half, my son had no ability to creatively play, he would just line up cars, he was almost completely none verbal. It was impossible to teach him simple games like snap, as he would just get frustrated and destroy things, he was extremely defiant and headstrong, he was quite a magpie and we were forever finding collections of sharp objects which he'd somehow acquired from School. He would trash all his possessions. My daughter had a deep distrust particularly of females and would lash out in Huge three hour tantrums. I effectively sacrificed any career progression to work from home permanently which I don't regret at all. We spent years driving a hundred mile round trip often twice a week for therapy which ultimately killed a car and thousands of hours of therapeutic parenting which made little difference. Its difficult to articulate the amount of damage one little boy can do to a household and he was endlessly demanding. Eventually after a fight at the age of 7 we managed to get him diagnosed with ADHD and from his first medication, everything we'd put into him just lit up, He is very high EQ, manners, inquisitiveness, schoolwork etc. It was all in him, he just couldn't access it. But we do recognise that he is still easily led, his behaviour moulds to the situation so if he is in an overstimulating environment or hanging around with troublemakers he is easily sucked into that behaviour. He is slowly learning that there is a pattern to these things and how to be more aware of it. Sleep is a very important thing for them both. There is a notable difference the next day when they stay up late. All in all its been quite a struggle to get them to the point they are now where he is excelling in school and they both have an extremely strong earned secure attachment style. I think our frustration stems from the fact that no matter how much we have spoken at length to my parents about complex PTSD, secondary trauma, the importance of sleep and overstimulation, the don't listen and don't believe. They just want to be grandparents and do as they please. Which often is not in the best interest of the children. 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. We wanted go buy them piggy banks and they turned up with two, we wanted to buy them advent calendars and the same with that, we wanted to mark their heights not he wall and they turn up with a wall chart. We'd already missed all the firsts with a baby but they kept on taking what few firsts we had left. That and the total overstimulation and giving in to my sons ceaseless demands when we were trying to teach him structure. So yes, we are frustrated by them. 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.

It’s pretty unlikely she’s not gillick competent to consent to an emergency consultation for a leg injury at 14 even with adhd. There would have to be robust evidence to the contrary. Does she have a phone?

I have a 14yo with ASD and brittle asthma. In many ways she is a young 14 as well.

I am torn on this one. As much as I worry, my young teen is also a capable young woman who I am teaching to be independent. If she had her grandparents for support and it was a simple injury, parents were not really required. At the same time, I do want to know about big things.

basically, this comes down to I really wouldn’t be that angry at the grandparents. It was a judgment call. With a younger child or a more serious injury, the answer would have been clear.

Nobody is saying dramatically phone the parents and say get to a&e now their saying let them know. All that needed to happen was a quick call to say nothing to worry about but dd as had an accident we've brought her to a&e to be checked over but shes fine in herself you don't need to rush down we'll keep you updated then its the parents choice.

It's a shame that none of this was in your first post, OP, it would have changed so many responses.

Yes, they should have told you. Not sure why they couldn't call you, if they didn't want to call your wife.

I'm not saying they were wrong to take her to A&E at all, but they should at least have called you on the way there to let you know what was happening, so you had the option to meet them there if you wanted to. Particularly in the context of your daughter's previous medical history.

It's a pity your daughter didn't feel she could text you herself from the hospital to tell you what was happening, if your parents had decided not to contact you - but I appreciate that what you've said about her being a 'young' 14 and not very confident (plus perhaps feeling woozy and weird after fainting) is probably a factor in that too.

Hope she's feeling better now. Fainting for the first time can be really unsettling.

Gosh, that’s a massive complication!

For your average family I would have said YABU.
Yours is not average. You have highly sensitive children with additional needs and a trauma background.

That’s a totally different situation.

You’ve done incredibly well with your DC, you should be very proud. Your parents clearly don’t understand the intricacies of it and are operating like typical grandparents.

Perhaps it’s time to encourage your daughter to know when to ring you. She sounds very sensible.

They can't do right for doing wrong really but at the very least they should have told you so you could make that decision yourself whether or not to go to the hospital, they took away your choice but I do kind of get where they're coming from.

They were quite right to take her to hospital.

They were wrong not to tell you.

A calm polite conversation -

Thank them for taking her

Tell them in future you must both be informed if anything like this happens again.

Is the fainting episode being investigated?

I can categorically say I would rather know my child was hurt than anyone be worried about me sleeping after a shift at work!!!

I think YABU for sharing so much of your children's personal info online for strangers to read

This. As a first occurrence, it isn't a big deal. Just tell them that you would like to be informed immediately if anything like this happens again.

Given your last post, why on earth are you letting your grandparents look after them overnight? You can do lots of stuff as an extended family, but you shouldn’t be leaving your kids with them unsupervised.

Was this some sort of emergency situation where you’d had to be away from home unexpectedly while your wife was on nights? If so, just be glad no lasting damage was done. But you can’t rely on them for care. Find people who are capable of caring for your children if you foresee needing this sort of support again.

Okay that is a massive backstory OP, I don't think that people can really make an informed decision based on your first two posts.
There is obviously a both complex trauma history and a challenging grandparent relationship.

This event as an individual standalone experience isn't that noticeable but it sounds as though it is one small drop in a large ocean.

Encouraging your dc to contact you directly might be one possible way forward here.

There's always a drama llama in every thread.

Stopping 'unsupervised' contact 😳

Give your head a wobble.

OP if it means that much to you then you explain to GPs that if it happens again you want to be told.

No need to ramp it up to a major fallout.

It's a shame that none of this was in your first post, OP, it would have changed so many responses.

I wanted to see the lay of the land without complicating matters initially. There's what, 3000 adoption in the uk per year, about 1/3 go off without a hitch, 1/3 have some bumps in the road and 1/3 have real problems from out of the gate. Just the way the cookie crumbles. The kids don't have the traditionally attachment style. What they have is earned secure so from their point of view we are first port of call for fixing problems. Which is why we had a lot of tears that night from DD. She thought she was dying, didn't feel she could express that to her grandparents so bottled it up. But I was interested to hear the responses purely from a biological parent point of view as obviously my parents are biological parents and I'm not. I'm a parent who inadvertently was thrown into unpicking a lot of trauma and neglect so I accept I view things from a different perspective.

She had a bit of a fall, they were taking her to get her ‘checked out’ not because she had a discernible injury. It isn’t their fault your Dd didn’t tell them she fainted.

Your poor parents....they want to spend time with a grandchild and look after her in exactly the same way you would. Then they let you know. No harm done, no emergency ...just good quality care .

Why didn't you put that detail into your OP? It's a completely different scenario!

Given your last post, why on earth are you letting your grandparents look after them overnight? You can do lots of stuff as an extended family, but you shouldn’t be leaving your kids with them unsupervised.

Was this some sort of emergency situation where you’d had to be away from home unexpectedly while your wife was on nights? If so, just be glad no lasting damage was done. But you can’t rely on them for care. Find people who are capable of caring for your children if you foresee needing this sort of support again.

It was not my preference to do so, and no. I wasn't going anywhere, my parents had taken them out to the town lights switch on and asked when they dropped them off if they could have them overnight. The whole taking them to the skate park bit was tagged on while they were up there. I added the back story for context. From the outside no-one sees the work that's gone in. They are doing well in mainstream school, have appropriate hobbies etc, but that doesn't mean they don't have triggers or need things doing in a certain way. Our life is organised in such a way we don't need childcare, we never have. Im not trying to stop the kids seeing their grandparents. it was their choice to go, after all they are 12 and 14. It seems quite clear as I say, my parents choose not to want to see or believe the issues because it conflicts with their wants as grandparents, and they aren't shy of criticising us for having guardrails around the kids behaviour.

And if they just left her with a bad leg you would be whinging about that.
Ffs get a grip!!!

Why didn't you put that detail into your OP? It's a completely different scenario!

As I say, I wanted the perspective of biological parents, because I'm not one any they are. But if knowing the background makes a person act in a different manner, then that begs the question, my parents know the background, why did they choose not to act on. it.

We wanted go buy them piggy banks and they turned up with two, we wanted to buy them advent calendars and the same with that, we wanted to mark their heights not he wall and they turn up with a wall chart. We'd already missed all the firsts with a baby but they kept on taking what few firsts we had left. That and the total overstimulation and giving in to my sons ceaseless demands when we were trying to teach him structure. So yes, we are frustrated by them. 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.

Your update still sounds unjustified to me.

If you think the grandparents are not doing a good enough/safe job. Take responsibility and don't let them spend so much time with them. Pay a childminder with the extra money the children receive for their appropriate care.

The piggy banks and the wall chart are nick picking. Keep schtum next time about gifts you intend to buy. You are literally complaining that the grandparents did something nice.

Seriously, I suspect there have been a few frustrations in the past and now EVERY LITTLE THING is being jumped on.

You are teaching your children drama.

Stop relying on the GP and PAY someone more qualified.