As a parent teaching your children is part and parcel of life as they grow up. Yet every day as a parent you learn something new as well. About 3 years ago Emma discovered she had spots all over the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands. A visit to the doctor was not helpful who said that it was probably stress related and want to start her on anti-depression tablets. Unhappy with the reported problems of such medication Emma decided that she would just leave them a few weeks and see how things went.

Two weeks after the doctors visit and all the spots had gone, as well as the stress of having the spots! What has that got to do with parents still learning you may ask, well recently our little lad came home from day care complaining about a sore mouth. Upon investigation we noticed he had ulcers on his tongue and cheeks so it was off to the doctors with this one.

Hand foot & mouth was the outcome! The daycare centre had a small outbreak of this viral disease, nothing really to worry about as it usually subsides after 3-4 days. Sometimes the ulcers can cause problems with drinking and eating but for our lad that didn’t seem to be a problem. He still managed to eat some of his lunch and evening meal and to help him with the ulcers ice cream was the best medication we came up with, better that the gel the doc gave us.

Here comes the learning part. Our daughter who is six didn’t get anything of the hand, foot & mouth but us mum and dad got some real irritating spots on our hands and feet, not dis-similar to those Emma got 3 years ago and things all started to fall into place now. Our daughter went to the same day centre and must have contracted a mild form of this hand, foot & mouth back then and passed this onto Emma who just had given birth. Probably a bit low, her immune system would have been unable to fight this as much as other adults who are not suppose to get hand, foot & mouth.

The spots are not as severe as those Emma had but they are definitely the same type of spots. So what did we learn about this? Adults can contract hand, foot & mouth from their children. Even though told by a doctor that he could go to day care they wouldn’t let him in, so doctors don’t know everything. But the most depression thing we learnt is that doctors are very quick to get people onto anti-depression drugs, why this is I’m not really sure but if your doctors answer to most illnesses is stress and depression maybe its time to find a new doctor, I know we did.