Antibiotic Prescriptions For Children - Myths Busted

When it comes that a child is sick, it turns out to be a really worrisome situation for parents. Not only because of the discomfort of the child, but also due to confusion in deciding what to opt as a treatment. Amidst so many myths, facts, and especially FEAR of safety for your child, it’s important to keep some very basic points in mind.

Home Remedies

We live in a society which has a rich history and medicinal knowledge. Our ancestors relied primarily on home remedies when the healthcare wasn’t much developed.

Even in today’s era, people still rely on home remedies as their first step in treatment for their children for the majority of things to a point they can, but is it all?

If you ask my opinion- NO!

Home remedies are well suited for the initial line of treatment which lasts from 24-36 hours, until you get access to a doctor for examination.

When it comes to children, EXAMINATION IS VERY ESSENTIAL EVEN FOR THE MOST SIMPLE LOOKING COMMON COLD!

You can definitely continue with home remedies, but after getting it approved from the consulting doctor.

However, if a child shows signs like inability to breathe, continuous crying, refusing feed/food, pain, bluish discolorations, seizures, high-grade fever, rashes, excessive sleeping, it’s advised to skip the home remedy and take your child to the nearest hospital.

Is Antibiotic Medication Harmful For My Child?

The most common anxiety of mothers is “my child gets sick very often and if we take him to doctor they prescribe medicine, which is not safe for children”

Well, dear mothers, your concern is not essentially wrong, injudicious use of medicine is definitely not advisable. But as my experience says, most patients visit doctors when the ailment is in acute phase, having tried everything they could at their end be it some home remedy or sometimes even self-medication (repeating the same medicine which was prescribed to the child earlier for a similar looking bout of symptoms).

Now the point to understand here is - many diseases can have exactly the same symptoms like fever, cold and cough, which are also the starting points for a majority of diseases which are results of some underlying cause and not being a disease in themselves. They are just symptoms.

Treating symptoms doesn’t account for treating the cause. By an examination, a doctor evaluates those similar looking symptoms on a spectrum of diseases and then decides the course of treatment.

And if you find your child falling ill very frequently, most of the times it’s due to weak immunity, nutritional deficiency, hygiene and not correcting the environmental cause or some specifics in a few cases like - products, clothes, temperature, mud, and dust.

Since medicine as a field has advanced in leaps and bounds, we have doctors of all specialties and super specialties.

Always remember - if your child has repeated episodes of similar symptoms like a cold cough, runny nose, urine infections, and diabetes, you should seek an opinion of a specialist doctor of a particular field, for instance:

• Urologist - for urinary tract issues
• Gastroenterologist - for digestive tract issues
• Dermatologist - for skin issues
• Ent- for ear, nose, throat issues
• Endocrinologist - for hormone-related complaints
• Dentist - for all dental issues
• Surgeon - for treatment of burns, cuts and wound dressings

Do antibiotics cause adverse effects? No, until they are advised by your well-reputed pediatrician post a proper examination for the current episode of illness. A well-experienced and skilled doctor herself wouldn’t prescribe unnecessary medications. If you are still in doubt, you may take a second opinion from another doctor of the same specialization.

So, firstly take a prompt action for visiting a pediatrician or a specialist soon to avoid development of a full-fledged episode of sickness. Secondly, avoid giving medicines on your own. Also, stopping the medicines in between of prescribed days of treatment causes the development of antibiotic resistance both in adults and children, so please do not practice that too.

Still have doubts about antibiotic medication for your child. Do drop your comment/question for me in the comment section below. I would be glad to join in the conversation and further discuss the topic with you. 

Wishing your child a very healthy future!