The one thing you should never do when your kids are sick.

By JO ABI

This is what happens when you ask a bunch of strangers for advice on your kids’ health: you get hit with random, irrelevant opinions based on their own lives which are often far from helpful.

Put milk in her eye and it will cure her eye infection right up…

Eat oranges and your kids will never have a cold or flu again…

…right…

And that’s exactly what you’re doing every time you type a health question into an internet search engine – you’re pretty much just throwing it out there for a bunch of strangers to give their opinion on.

You don’t even know who these people are. Would you ask for advice on how to get your child to go to sleep faster at night in the supermarket checkout line? (Okay, that only happened once and I was desperate. I was really only aiming the question to the nice looking older lady who was standing next to me but everyone else heard and gave me their opinions as well).

Just as an FYI, you should know that this post is sponsored by www.healthdirect.gov.au. But all opinions expressed by the author are 100% authentic and written in their own words. 

Turning to the internet for help is like trying to get an answer from a bus full of office workers who don’t know me or my children – but I’m afraid I’ve fallen victim to good old Dr. Google many, many times.

You know when you’ve been worried about something but you don’t have time to take your kids to the doctor, and whatever is wrong is kind of minor so you’d feel silly booking an appointment? It’s the sort of thing you’ll try and remember to mention – just in case – when you’re there for a chest infection or a broken leg.

Because anyone with two, three, four children knows that half your life can be wasted waiting for doctors, filling prescriptions, going back to the doctor, until you feel as though you live there and the receptionists don’t have to ask you for your name anymore. (Hopefully they sneak you up the waiting list a couple of places because you are, after all, really good friends now).

But after those first few frantic and uncertain years of parenting when you’re highly likely to present to a hospital emergency room because your baby has a blocked nose, you tend to be more selective about your doctor visits. (Okay, that only happened once and it was only because my son was newborn and so little and his nose was just so clogged up. He couldn’t breathe!)

To be honest, half the time I forget about getting some of these things checked out until the kids are in bed and I’m sitting down trying to catch up on episodes of The Block with my beloved tea in front of me. And my smart phone.

And that’s when I type in:

Small lump in neck…

Bump on spine…

Severe nose bleeds…

White patches on skin…

…And all those other things I’m yet to have properly checked out.

Guess what sort of responses I tend to get from Dr. Google? Just guess.

That’s right…CANCER, CANCER, HEMOPHILIA AND LIVER FAILURE. I scroll past all the personal stories saying, “Don’t worry…”, “It’s normal…” and end up clicking on links until I find the worst case scenario possible.

My son was having chest pains once and when I typed it into Dr. Google while I was waiting for him to get dressed so we could race up to the medical centre, CARDIAC EVENT came up.

I pretty much had a cardiac event myself after reading that, but guess what? It ended up being constipation.

Finding health information online doesn’t have to be a nightmare though, because there are reputable websites available that offer you real, helpful advice. So try and avoid asking a bunch of strangers for parenting advice, especially medical advice, and ESPECIALLY late at night. And for God’s sake, leave those poor strangers in the supermarket checkout line alone.

 Are you guilty of consulting Dr Google? 

Scroll through our gallery of the weirdest kids’ health myths…

 

Finding health information online can be overwhelming and most times you don’t know what information you can trust. Funded by the Governments of Australia, healthdirect.gov.au is your first step to access trusted online health information, advice and resources from leading Australian health organisations to help you make informed health decisions.

So don’t search for it – healthdirect it at healthdirect.gov.au