Chicken pox, should you try to let your child get it?

[shufflebum]

Several friends' children have chicken pox atm and I can't decide whether to take 16 month DS round to play.
I know back in the day people used to have parties to spread it around but I just can't get my head around consciously inflicting something nasty on my child (pfb!)
I know he needs to get it at some stage but when!

No.

It's like asking for trouble. Sods law you do that and your DC will get desperately ill with it. Let nature take it's course.

Both mine managed to get it at 9 months, it wasn't too bad.

No, why would you? 16 months is still very small. May be if he still hasn't got it when 10 you could do it then (i.e. before puberty). It is really bad as adults, but some children are really sick with it too. My DD was at 3.

Great thanks that was the reassurance I wanted. I could see no reason to deliberately make him ill especially as you say they can have it more than once. Will remember the PoxClin for when the inevitable happens.

I wouldn't. If he turned out to be one of the children who gets severe/fatal complications you'd never forgive yourself. The chances are that he'll catch it himself before he gets to secondary school age, and in the unlikely event that he doesn't you can consider private vaccination later on, before he gets to mid-teens/adulthood where it is more likely to be very nasty.

Well personally I would get it over with, because lifetime immunity does take in the majority of cases, and would be great to get it over and done with at a time when I could expect it and plan for it -- would be much better than pot luck of it striking later at any (probably especially inconvenient) time. 16 months seems quite an average age for DC to get it, ime.

But to each their own!

Private vaccination is something that I would consider actually but don't know anyone that has taken that route.
Ragged there's always one!

I would be happy if DC were vaxed for CP, too -- anything to avoid the hassle of quarantine, tbh. But it's not available routinely / easily on NHS, and I'm not going to the trouble of private.