I sometimes wonder exactly how much easier my kids would be if they a) let me take their temperature with an ear thermometer and b) would take any sort of medicine.
I pretty much just guess if either of mine have a fever by just a) looking at them and b) putting a hand to a forehead. And anyway they are older now so it really doesn’t matter if they have a temperature or not. I am also one of those people who thinks that a temperature can be useful: burn off that virus!
But if you have a baby or a small toddler or if you are just an unstoppably curious person or neurotic about health, knowing exactly what temperature your kids are at any given moment is essential. Being denied the information causes you actual, physical pain. If you have a child like mine who screams and writhes and arches its back, shakes and cowers when you approach bearing the ear thermometer aloft, it is torture.
So hooray, then for the Kinetic non-contact forehead thermometer! It does what it says – you point the doo-dah at the little sucker’s head and it tells you its temperature. I did have a non-contact thermometer for Kitty when she was a baby that I simply couldn’t make work. It cost a fortune and I was furious about it.
But this one is only £19.99 and having tried it out on me, my husband and both children I can confirm that it works and is easy to use. Though bloody Kitty put her arms and hands all over her forehead and went “NOOOOOOOOOO!”
This is the kind of kid I’m dealing with, FML.
My GP told me non contact thermometers are too inaccurate to be useful, so a complete waste of time, but I don’t think this can be true because I worked in Taiwan a decade ago, during the height of SARS and bird flu and used to have to take my kids temperatures every day or sometimes every hour and we used a thermometer just like this, and this was as part of a nation wide, public health emergency type situation. So if they’re good enough for the Taiwanese government, they’re good enough for me. And technology has obviously advanced miles and miles and miles in the last decade. I do love to seek my GP’s advice about my baby and then decide that, no, they are wrong. Passes the time. Elaine x
Yes GPs are a bit like SatNavs – thanks for the advice, but I think I’ll go my own way.
My kids have been ill so much I always can just tell whether it’s high or not, and if it’s high enough to warrant a doctor, and didn’t bother replacing my last thermometer. Even so, in the middle of the night I still get the hankering to know exactly what it is, as though it will help me in some way.
My kids seem to love medicine; I have trouble convincing them they don’t need it. You have my sympathy, though. My littlest had chicken pox quite badly last week and I felt so helpless in the face of it I don’t know what I would have done if I couldn’t count on the four hourly relief Calpol & Piriton gave us both, and knowing she’d just take it.
oh yeah fuck no fear. both mine leap up and scream and run around. and in the middle of the night really SCREAM and roll about and you think – god this is just not worth it…
Missed this!! Really! I hope the “little suckers” and big one are doing okay though!
This is such a good idea.
This is a brilliant idea. We started out when my first was little with one of those forehead strips with happy and sad faces on. Completely useless, especially as to get the thing flat on a forehead you need to put your hand over it, so the you just take the temperature of your own hand. Then my (half German) husband wanted to get an up-the-bum one.
Does it just read the temperature ‘close’ to their forehead though? That’s witchcraft, surely??