My Boyfriend’s Bizarre Rule on Antibiotics Is Putting His Kids in Danger

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Dear Care and Feeding, 

My boyfriend has two kids, ages 6 and 8. We’ve only been together for two years, and we waited a year to introduce me (my request). He’s a warm and loving boyfriend and a devoted and involved parent. I back his parenting decisions, and I know I’m not their mom—if he says it’s bedtime and his daughter asks me for 30 more minutes, I say it’s bedtime. If he and their mom are taking away the iPad for a couple days, I say no iPad.

But he grew up in a family that believed in alternative medicine, and sometimes I don’t agree around how he treats the kids’ illnesses. I know he and his ex also fight about this. I don’t want to get involved, but I’m not sure where the line is. If there’s a broken bone or a concussion, he takes them to the ER. They get regular dental care. But if a kid has a cold or sniffles, he bans sugar and encourages drinking hot water and specific herbal tea blends. OK, I don’t agree with that, but I know you can only really treat the symptoms of a cold, anyway, so it doesn’t seem that harmful.

But when one of his kids had a high fever that wouldn’t go down, and then actual pneumonia, he still was dead-set against Tylenol or antibiotics, and wanted to do things the alternative-medicine way. When this happened, I privately looped in his ex, who came by and fought with him to get real medical care. But that’s not right, and I don’t know what to do.

–Nervous About Naturopathy

Dear Nervous,

I don’t blame you for being nervous! You’ve walked into a fraught situation, made more difficult by the fact that there’s a sharp divide between your boyfriend and his ex on this very question. (Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if this conflict is one big reason they aren’t together anymore.)

Ordinarily, when someone disagrees with the parenting style of their new partner, my advice is to do what you’ve basically been trying to do: Just sit back and see how things develop; don’t pretend to be the parent; deal with the fact that your opinions on the subject of how to raise these kids, for now, don’t really matter. But this is different. These children’s health and safety are at stake. It’s one thing to give a child herbal tea when they have a cold. It’s another to ignore a case of pneumonia! Honestly, I’m glad you narced to the ex, even though that was an impossible situation to find yourself in.

This is more than a parenting debate between your boyfriend in your ex, and you can’t afford to sit back and wait. This issue imperils not only the children’s health but your relationship’s. Is there really a long-term future between you two if, like his ex, you cannot stand by while he makes objectively bad decisions about his kids’ medical care? I don’t think so. So you might as well be proactive and broach the subject now.

I think you need to speak up directly. Tell your boyfriend how frightened you were when his child had a serious illness and he wouldn’t trust science and medicine to address it. You’re worried he is putting their safety at risk, and you can’t stand by while such a thing is happening. You can even tell him, if it comes up, that you were the one who called his ex about the pneumonia. The results of this conversation might not be pleasant, but they will certainly be clarifying.

—Dan

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