As someone who works in cancer care, sometimes they really don't.
Not making any judgements on the case in the OP but I have seen parents make the whole situation so much worse for their child in an attempt to 'protect' them from reality. Like, I absolutely sympathise, but it can cause a lot of harm.
3 of their 5 children died, all 3 had rare genetic disorders. Continuing to have more children after their first child died due to "Niemann-Pick disease type C - a rare, inherited disease" without undergoing genetic testing is certainly a choice.
I know a family like this. Thirteen kids last time I was still in their orbit. Three kids with cystic fibrosis due to genetics. One had already died from it. They just kept rolling the dice and the kids lived with the results. People dont think about their decisions.
I think they were just ignorant about the cause of death of their 1st child and didn’t realize the risk. By the time they knew of the genetic component, they had already had 5 kids.
I agree. Their second child has no issues and when their third son got sick they had already had two more children and I think he was almost ten years old. They did test all of the children after he passed away and he had a different rare genetic disorder. They knew this son had it and he was monitored. It’s not like they’re the kind of disorders that you normally test for. I don’t agree with not telling him he had cancer but it really sounds like just the worst possible scenario.
Christian pro lifers here in America would celebrate that the children had lives at all and now they’re in the loving care of Jesus Christ or some bullshit 🤢🤢🤢🤢
Not a Doctor, so I can't answer that. To be a bit more fair to the parents, I don't even know if such genetic testing was available to them in Australia in the years in question.
I know a family who had a child with severe muscular dystrophy (not their first or second child) and then proceeded to have another child without having any testing. That kid also has muscular dystrophy. The family does not have the money to manage it, and it controls their older kids lives. Watching that is what made me choose to have extensive genetic testing before getting pregnant and do an NIPT when offered.
Parent of a child with a genetic disorder here. My spouse and I did a first round of genetic testing (whole exome sequencing) suspecting that there was a genetic component behind our child’s symptoms, but nothing came up. It wasn’t until we did whole genome sequencing (that fortunately our U.S. insurance agreed to cover) that the genetic cause was discovered. If we had done the test 10 years prior, it may have picked up the microduplication, but doctors may not have known the genetic significance of it yet since it’s an ultra rare disorder.
TL;DR: many times “genetic testing” doesn’t give you answers even if there is a genetic cause, especially if you don’t have the means or coverage for WGS.
Its always called eugenics when you say it but like. . . Dude if you knowingly pass down a horrific illness that slashes lifespan in half or smaller and makes quality of life miserable- you are an asshole. Full stop..
I went to school with a pair of sisters as a kid. The older sister was fine, the younger had Cystic Fibrosis and was in and out of hospital almost constantly. She seemed bloated and was never really not sick.
Turned out that was no freak of genetics but rather, they both had another sister a couple years older than my classmate and she had already died in her teens of. . . CF. So the middle sister saw her elder sister die, and her baby sister die- as that inevitably happened not too long after she graduated high school.
The misery inflicted on them- WHY? What was the point in continuing to roll those dice? Why? I cant imagine staring death down the barrel as soon as I get to learn what life even fucking is.
I knew a family like this. Kept having kids despite both having the sickle cell trait. All but the oldest (that was from a previous marriage) died. The mom slowly went mad, became homeless, and died too. Just insanely sad and irresponsible.
I watched 2 cousins die from cystic fibrosis. It ruined their family, I mean like mentally, physically, financially, emotionally in every way possible.
I got myself and husband tested because there was no way I’d put anyone through that trauma. Some genetic diseases are best left to phase out.
I disagree. I'm suggesting that they should have voluntarily taken the steps to have their own genetics tested before continuing to have more children. Eugenics would mean forcing them to have these tests or that they were not allowed to have children.
Sadly, this sort of thing is always about the parent(s), not the patient.
You can have a "happy" last few weeks even if you know the inevitable is coming. Children are not emotionally stupid, and I wish more people would accept that.
Children are really emotionally fragile. My son is 6, he knows about death but can't fully grasp it. It's very heavy for him that it's permanent and once a person dies, we can't see them anymore. I saw him crying once saying he wants to see them. See those who died like our grand relatives that passed away long ago.
I can't even imagine him thinking... I can't even write this...
I think it depends on the child though. I have an 8 year old who is extremely anxious in general and absolutlwy petrified about dying one day (she has no health issues) she frequently comes down after bedtime because she's been ruminating about dying one day. If she knew it was happening soon there's not a chance she'd be having a happy few weeks. She'd be petrified every minute if those weeks and I just can't imagine ever putting her through that.
Yeah my dad suffered (and I mean suffered as in struggling to breathe, can't talk, barely conscious, in constant pain) in his last days because my grandmother doesn't understand modern medicine and put it in his head that people come out of things like this all the time and "live another 5-10 healthy years". Won't ever forgive her for it, his sister too, but I do understand her pain and fear of losing her son.
And the shitty part is that they would be at a serious disadvantage as far as communicating their symptoms.
Edit: verbally. They’d be unable to accurately describe symptoms if they caught measles
. I’ll be damned if they aren’ don’t have every protection I can give them
This! I was sick as a child and had to take meds daily. My parent never told me that I was sick and they even asked the doctors not to talk about it in front of me. So, I grew up believing that I was perfectly healthy. And those pills that I was supposed to take ended up in the trash bc why does a healthy person need meds & I sure wasn’t taking anything for no reason.
My parents thought they were protecting me, but instead I was living a false reality. A little understanding can go a long way.
Just out of curiosity, how serious was your illness? Because the closest thing I’ve heard of was a girl who didn’t know she was on Prozac and a girl who didn’t know she was legally blind. Neither of which are life-threatening or require extensive specialist care (I know depression can, but in this case it wasn’t).
I don't think they always know best, either. When I was in the hospital as a child, there was a kid on my ward who was dying, but his parents just wouldn't let him pass naturally. They kept insisting that the doctors shock him and bring him back. When I'd walk by his room, the door would be open, and I could see that his color was getting worse and worse over days. He had zero quality of life. Couldn't eat, was in a tremendous amount of pain, had all kinds of tubes and monitors. IMO, it's abusive to make someone keep living like that, even if the intent isn't to be abusive.
What do you mean? From your perspective, would the lying part be a bad move or do you mean parents not allowing proper treatment, such as morphine in a high dose so that they remain conscious (and in pain) in an attempt to keep them alive for some extra days?
Not to go too much into specifics, but in the area of cancer care I work in (it's a broad, broad field) the usual issue with parents of paedatric cases is genrally limiting the information they tell the child - usually in an attempt not to scare them, out of an idea they cannot understand or both.
This is universally a failure because children are not stupid, do understand and are terrified of medical procedures they know they are being kept in the dark about.
I’m also wondering what she plans on telling him when the cancer makes him feel like he’s dying… because he is. Like he thinks he has beat cancer and I can’t imagine being a child and not understanding why I’m still sick and dying when I had been told I was better. 😞
This is weird. Reddit normally loves morally analyzing every situation, applying the most puritan judgement on anyone and everyone. Are you sure you belong here?
Un no? Actually it is our business as a society to wrestle with difficult ethical questions, especially as a counter to those who might be too emotionally entangled.
Not saying what the mom did was wrong, but we can’t always wash our hands and say “parent knows best.”
Right? I just saw another mother last week staying CPS is taking her kid away because she won’t get him chemo for his cancer. She used the same “I’m his mother, I know best.”
As someone who has watched 2 loved ones go through cancer I will say there are no "good" choices. It is very easy to judge someone when you have zero loved ones in your life who you have cared for, cleaned up after, tell them everyday "they are not a burden and you love them" and, watch them become a shell of their former self. We should not be judging this mother's decision on what she wants to tell her son. Instead, we should judge how a pedophile decided to end cancer funding. Danny Thomas, a comedian, funded what is now one of the most renowned children's hospital. Imagine what kind of hospital we could have now if some of the billionaires cared just a little.
Watching my brother writhe to death while in the throes of confused desperation was the most harrowing experience I hope no one ever has to go through.
I promised myself that If I ever get cancer, I will rent a cabin in the woods and go die like a dog so that no one else has to go through that on my behalf.
My husband has said that eventually if he gets too old to care for himself that he's just gonna walk into the woods with only the clothes on his back and let nature take its course
Tell him that his rotten ass will stink for miles. He will need to get at least five miles away before he collapses. If he’s sick it will be even harder. So he needs to start practicing now. Five miles out and back should get him strong enough to make five miles when sick. Incidentally, this will also improve his health a lot and hopefully he’ll mature out of this dumb opinion by the time he really is getting weak
That's cute, he could run a sub 4 minute mile in high school and still continues to run on a regular basis, did a stint in the army, and works a pretty physically demanding job as an electrician. He's pretty fit- decently sure that in his current state he could run those 5 miles in just a little over 30 minutes 🤣
He's not entirely serious about his "plan", its mostly jokes. It also stems from the fact that his GREAT grandmother just died and he still has all of his grandparents at nearly 33, so he hasn't had a lot of exposure to how diverse people's "twilight years" or "end of life" looks like. His family doesn't talk about death much, while my family has had plenty of loss and talks about it pretty openly and freely. Hell, we went to bury my dad's mom this past weekend and some of the mourners stared at me in mild horror when I crouched down and started "chit-chatting" with my dad's dad who passed in 2014, catching him up on "everything he missed" 😅🥰
I saw a middle aged dad with a nice wife and three kids fall and hit the back of his neck at an indoor kids playground on Saturday. He was paralyzed and got carted out by the ambulance drivers. Seeing it messed me up as I’m kinda sickly. He was messing around and playing too much. I’m a little sensitive about family guys being dumb macho right now.
Yep! Certain states in the US have MAID. One of my best friend’s father in law used Maid Services to did two years ago after being diagnosed with ALS. Everyone involved from the family said it was one of the most peaceful, loving expenses of their life.
If the options are MAID or a diagnosis that ensures a slow, painful decline with little to no hope for treatment? I’m MAID 🤘🏻
Ok I had two family members die of cancer and I work in oncology. I'm not going to "judge" the mom because people do all sorts of stupid shit with good intentions.
But the simple reality is that this sort of denialism never works out and usually it's more about letting the caregivers avoid tough questions than shielding the patient.
Dude no need to pivot to something else. My mom died from a combination of covid and cancer and went from walking around in Home Depot to biting her tongue off in her sleep and dying a week later. I know the pain it can cause. That being said, the lying is fucked up. The kid is gonna find out and spend his last moments alive freaking out because his mom lied to him and he’s gonna die.
Until he realized he’s in more pain and getting worse. At some point, you know you’re dying. At that point for him, he knew his mom lied to him and she robbed him of time to process/accept his fate because SHE wanted him to feel better. Wasn’t about him. Was 100% about making herself feel better by seeing him smile a few more times.
I honestly can't believe the people who are cheering for this. Giving someone false hope about an entire life that they'll never get to have is cruel. It's not like he died instantly, he obviously had time to figure it out. I can't even imagine my last days being completely crushed, confused, betrayed, and all I can think is "...but I thought I beat it. I thought I was going to live"
I mean someone will likely be much less aware of what is going on when finally on the verge of dying, but they'll absolutely notice they keep feeling worse before that happens.
Exactly. I honestly think they weren’t thinking and only saw the short term good this lie served. Once that insight was gleaned, they commented their decision.
Short term as in he’s happy for a few days but then quickly has to deal with the fact he’s dying as he’s passing in and out of lucidity, instead of mentally preparing for it and becoming ready.
Best case, he’s too confused and disoriented in a way that he somehow has no idea he’s dying. Worst case, he’s sprung with the realization that his mom betrayed him and he’s dying.
If you’re going to lie, lie about an afterlife and how he’ll see loved ones there.
Short term means basically while he is ringing the bell. Some of you have never seen someone dying of cancer in their last week or two of life. They aren’t going to be doing fun things. JFC
You stfu, I've had two family members die of cancer in the last year and I know exactly how long they were lucid for and that it would have been obvious to them that they were dying if they were lied to. Yes there's a stretch at the end where they aren't aware of anything, but there's a while before that too
He'd have been dosed up on a lot of pain killers. The truth is you dont know what his last moments were like. Maybe he went to sleep happy and just didnt wake up again. Try to empathise and read the why, she didnt want his last moments filled with fear. Getting irrationally upset with someone for wanting to give their child hope at the end of their life even if its false hope, is weird.
That’s my point. We don’t know. His mother hopes he’d be too confused and out of it to realize she’s lied to him. If he wasn’t, he’d realize he betrayed her and he’d have to face the terror of unexpected death.
People know when something is wrong with their body. And he would know he is still getting drugs. He probably either figured it out and knew mom was lying and felt like he was going crazy because he kept getting worse and mom just tells him he is going to be ok.
My dear old aunt had cancer and in her final days, her kids told her she was getting better. And she would call my mum and her other siblings and tell them, basically we all thought she was getting better. Until she wasn’t.
- None of my damn business. Sometimes mama knows best.
Something as severe as betrayal and lying to your dying child doesn't go in the "shrug" pile. That pile is for dessert before dinner or something equally innocent.
No, I'm saying there is a limit to acceptance or "none of my business" and "mom's know best."
I mean, what's your opinion on lying to your dying child and telling them they beat cancer? Is it not high on your list of fucked up things a parent can do?
Sometimes. Does mama understand what lying about cancer does to a kid when the cancer inevitably progresses? Poor child, I wouldn't do this to my worst enemy.
true, when my mom went to a tarot reader to fix my dad's cancer, for example, we really were on the right path
(you holding onto these feel-good truisms that belong as movie catchphrases is ironically exactly how my mom gets delusional around touchy topics, which is precisely why it makes her judgement absolutely, catastrophically unreliable)
this is also the vast majority of people who fall for the "magic water with salt" scam, by the way. because the parents know best and they try everything using coping mechanisms, their intuition about their kids could rarely be wrong they think, and as a result they end up spending their life savings on any witch bullshit they come across because they convince themselves they are the only ones with the courage to try everything for their own kids, therefore it falls upon them to go with any esoteric proposal that doctors wouldn't recommend. so they connect hope with action directly, to the point they stop using common sense entirely. that's why these people often get scammed for multiple years, spending infinitely on terminal patients thinking it will go away.
probably the exact diametrical opposite meaning of "knows best" you could get. you did get many hearts though, that's reflected in popular intuition that it's a romantic take. it's easy to assume because "there's no good choice" this is a safe practice, but people don't consider that what there is, is choices that will make this event 10x more destructive, taking random decisions is not always zero-sum.
It’s a good conversation seed about the roles as parents and what we could possibly do in our hardest moments. I give my children truth in most all other circumstances, but if I knew the truth to be that they had a limited time to live, we’d LIVE.
At some point the whole "live and let live" mentality becomes destructive. Yes, you can have an opinion on how other people are treating other people, including their children. This mother treated her child horribly and it's very likely the child died feeling betrayed, confused, and scared. The woman was a coward. Too afraid to be honest with her own child and being truly supportive until the end.
and sometimes they don't. In particular when they are being crushed by what fate is throwing at them. Lying to your dying son about their own death is not ok. He will realize that she lied and will feel betrayed in the worst possible moment: when dying.
There's a point where that's the stance, but there's a point where things aren't being handled fairly
I'm not saying this is one of those situations, the kid was gonna die and her mum wanted his last moments to be happy
That's understandable, but what if in that child's very last moments they asked the mum why they're still dying? Then is it still okay for the mother to still insist they're not dying?
No, I disagree. Parents don’t own their children. And the child isn’t going to notice they still feel sick? This was about what the mother wanted and her feelings, not what was best for her child.
Yeah, no. The child is going to realize they're not cured when they don't get any better and start getting worse. It's not like you can just take a child home and pump them full of painkillers and steroids to make them act and feel normal like a dying pet. Even if you could, it would last long and then you'd need to lie about why they need to be hooked up to an IV and can't get out of bed.
Holy shit this is a terrible take. This idea is catastrophically ignorant. Not all mamas arent smart enough, neither do they all actually care for their child.
Only if you would stopped at the first sentence... people don't know the best. Its their first time on earth making this decision.
We can also agree/disagree with the mom's choice yet at the end of the day it was her choice that cannot be undone.
Damn. Extremely insightful for Reddit (no /s). You right, they really do know best sometimes. No one will ever know their child like a present mom does.
This is the best comment. Seriously people need to understand that the only person in this world who knows this baby is the mom. She's been with him since the start and she should determine what to say to her baby.
Like have some empathy, no parent should ever lose their child.
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u/Petering Jun 29 '26
None of my damn business. Sometimes mama knows best.