It’s sad to know you cannot always trust your closest family members in a medical crisis. Some of you might have family members who don’t believe in modern medicine, and wouldn’t be a trusted adult to make medical decisions for your child if you were unable to show up to the hospital during a medical emergency. We want to see the best in our family, but tolerating someone’s wacky beliefs during Thanksgiving dinner is very different from letting them and their Facebook medical degrees take the wheel when your kid is miserable with a high fever or experiencing long-term, painful symptoms of unknown origin. 

Most people are aware that they cannot make medical decisions for a child without first consulting the child’s parents or guardians. Giving kids alternative medicine that is not backed by medical science without asking their parents first is an egregious violation of trust, and anyone who does that should not be left alone with children.