When you have a sick child it can be difficult to be able to do anything other than stay home and care for them.

What would you do if your mom volunteered to watch your sick son, but then used alternative medicine to treat the cold without asking you first?

That is what happened to the mom in this story, so she yelled at her mother and told her to never use that type of treatment again.

Check it out.

AITA for telling my mother not to use alternative remedies on my son?

I can’t stop thinking about this.

My mother(60s) recently babysat my son(1) overnight while my husband and I went out with friends.

My son has been unwell with a cold for just over a week.

Initially, I said I would stay home with him and that we wouldn’t need a babysitter, but my mother insisted I go out.

That is nice of her to watch a sick kid like this.

I warned her that he hasn’t been sleeping through the night since he’s been sick so it could be rough.

I told her that if he woke with a fever to give him some medicine to lower his temperature and offer him water, but that he would settle back once the medicine kicked in.

The original plan was for my mother to come to our house to babysit, but she asked to babysit him in hers.

So we dropped him off (3hr round trip) and she dropped him back to ours the following day.

The next day when I asked how the night went, she said that it was awful.

He didn’t sleep much, he was feverish and coughing.

Wow, I wonder if it actually helped.

I asked if she gave him medicine and she said that she did; but when it didn’t appear to work.

So she cut up an onion and put it in his socks and said that he hasn’t coughed since.

She sounded proud when she said it, and a little defiant.

Now, my issue isn’t the remedy she used, it’s where she heard it from.

Her Facebook is a right-wing echo chamber filled with scare mongering about trans rights and anti-vax sentiments.

She got the idea from a woman she follows on Facebook whose Wikipedia page says that she has no medicinal qualifications and promotes “dangerous and unsubstantiated alternative medicine claims”.

This isn’t the first time she suggested doing this when he had a cough, but it is the first time she could test it herself.

Here’s where I may be the AH.

Does it matter where the ‘treatment’ came from if it is harmless and worked?

I asked her where she heard that remedy from, she said “From Dr Barbara O’Neill,” and I waited until it was just us in the room.

Then I said “No more Barbara O’Neill,” and my mother reacted with anger and defiance.

She said that I “didn’t know what it was like”, “she was worried” and that she “thought he was going to vomit from coughing so hard”.

I said that I did know what it was like because he’s been like that all week.

There was some back and forth before she seemed to resign and agree no more alternative remedies.

However it didn’t feel sincere, which worries me that next time she just won’t tell me about it.

He makes a good point.

My husband thinks I was an AH because of the timing; she just did us a huge favor by babysitting and making a 3hr round trip to bring him back to our house the next day, which I did appreciate and thanked her for.

He does agree with my sentiment but thought it could wait for another time.

I just wanted to nip it in the bud then and there before my mother thinks she can experiment with alternative medicine remedies on my son, but now I feel guilty.

AITA?

Honestly, that ‘treatment’ does no harm and at least according to the mom, it worked, so I don’t see what the problem is other than that grandma did it without asking.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say.

This is correct.

This person says not to leave a sick child with a babysitter.

This commenter says to never leave the child with grandma again.

Here is someone who says mom was right to be concerned.

This person says she might try dangerous treatments next.

I’m just surprised the treatment worked.

But the grandmother definitely overstepped.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.