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

A Reddit user recounts a tense exchange with their mother, who used an alternative remedy on their sick child while babysitting. Concerned about the influence of unreliable sources and the potential risks, the user confronted their mother, causing tension despite her having helped out significantly. Read the full story below.

‘ 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.

I warned her that he hasn’t been sleeping through the night since he’s been sick so it could be rough, and 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. I asked if she gave him medicine and she said that she did; but when it didn’t appear to work, 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. I asked her where she heard that remedy from, she said “From Dr Barbra O’Neill”, and I waited until it was just us in the room. Then I said “No more Barbra 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.

My husband thinks I was an AH because of the timing; she just did us a huge favour 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.. So reddit, AITA?

Here’s what Redditors had to say:

Bivagial −  NTA. Onion in the sock is a rather begnin remedy, so there was likely no harm done. This time. But there are some down right _dangerous_ ideas online and a lot of old wives tales that can do a lot of harm. This time it was an onion in a sock. Next time it could be drinking raw eggs or essential oils. While it was nice of her to babysit, I think that you need to be careful going forward with unsupervised visits. It only takes one bad “remedy” to give lasting damage.

In saying that, there are _some_ alternative treatments that _do_ help. For example, my grandmother would wrap my joints in wool if I complained about joint pain. It worked. I have no idea why, but it did. But the danger of badly informed alternative medicine far outweighs any potentially good ones. I would say that if you can trust her to do it, you should institute a “call me first” rule, with a blanket “no” if she can’t get ahold of you.

Even something as seemingly innocuous as a few drops of essential oils mixed in bathwater can be dangerous, depending on the oil. Especially for such a young child. If she complains, ask her how she felt when her mother/mil interfered with her parenting.

Other people taking care of your kids should definitely be “my way or the highway”. At the very least, if you do end up trusting her with your son again, let her know that this is her last chance and if you find out that she’s using alternative medicine without talking to you first, there’ll be no more unsupervised visits.

NorthernLitUp −  NTA. Onions in the socks are fairly harmless, but given her anti science position, it’s entirely possible that the next “remedy” she tries on him will not be so harmless, and you’re right in thinking she won’t even tell you if she gives him some “alternative” remedy. I would not leave her alone with your son again until he’s old enough to speak clearly and tell you if she gave him anything. You can’t trust someone that has such a hostile relationship with proven science.

Future_Direction5174 −  I have some herbalism knowledge, and a lot of medicine is derived from herbs. One of the most commonly used fever reducing medications is known as Aspirin. That is derived from Willow Bark. The problem is, you have no way of knowing how concentrated the willow bark tissane is, or that it is genuine willow bark, or that the willow bark isn’t contaminated with fungi, or road dust, or bird droppings. Which is WHY pharmaceutical medicines are safer.
Knowing what herbs are helpful doesn’t stop me using tested medicines.

Yew tree is poisonous – Tamoxifen however is derived from Yew and is used to treat b**ast cancer. I would never suggest that someone makes a tissane from yew, it will kill them. Euphorbia sap can be applied to small growths to clear them, but it won’t get rid of an aggressive cancer and may just delay you seeking proper (pharmaceutical) treatment so that you end up dying from cancer. Or needing massively disfiguring treatment to cure it.

Onion juice was used to clean wounds before the discovery of antibiotics. It won’t do much putting raw onion into his socks though. NTA – whilst I am not anti alternative medicine, using herbs is only for qualified herbalists. I am just someone who knows enough to appreciate the dangers. Your MIL isn’t.

ExpensiveRise5544 −  I would just say don’t let anyone babysit your kid again when he’s that sick. You didn’t really need to go out with friends, and you didn’t need to let her pressure you into taking him to her house.

Spike-2021 −  NTA. Your kid, your rules. No one but dad gets a vote. You were clear in your treatment plan. She chose to do something else. I had a friend from Switzerland who was a proud communist and this was the old school treatment she did with her kids and recommended to me for mine. I’m not promoting or denying the alternative treatment, just that it’s not necessarily a right-wing thing.

elsie78 −  NTA but the onion in sock remedy has been around over a century, it’s not exclusive to right wing blogs. I think the real concern would be “what next”? And for that yes you have a right to double think her babysitting again when baby is sick.

diminishingpatience −  NTA. You and your son got off lightly: next time it might not end so well.

laps-in-judgement −  It’s been a week and your son is running a fever. It sounds like it’s not just a cold. You’re just treating his symptoms & not going for a diagnosis. That concerns me more than the onions.

ivanvector −  NTA. If your mother doesn’t respect your choices with respect to your son’s care, don’t ever let her be alone with him ever again. You’ll never know if the next Facebook remedy she “does her own research” on will turn out to be harmful or even fatal.

There’s a copypasta that makes the rounds here about a mother of two young girls who disagreed with her own mother about their hair care, and told her explicitly not to use a certain kind of product that the grandmother had used on her, because one of the children was allergic. The grandmother “knew better” and used the product on the girls during a sleepover anyway, and one of the girls died from a severe reaction.

That’s an extreme case, but not so extreme for you, considering your mother is already ignoring your directions and taking medical advice from Facebook.

Floating-Cynic −  So I’m taking issue with something different than the rest of the sub:  She just did us a huge favour 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. The instant this happened, it was no longer a “favor” but about her wants.  Initially, I said I would stay home with him and that we wouldn’t need a babysitter, but my mother insisted I go out.. And her justification? 

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”. You told her your child was sick. If she was so worried, why didn’t she call you, the mom of said child?
NTA in the slightest.

It’s wrong to pressure a parent to leave a sick child, wrong to claim “doing a favor” gives someone the right to disregard boundaries, and wrong to use personal feelings to defend our choices when we didn’t utilize the option of checking with the person who should be making those decisions.