A Texas mother found it absurd that people online were playing doctor and diagnosing her 4-year-old daughter based on her photos.
Kiely Branch said she got “frustrated” when viewers started becoming “aggressive” and accused her of not taking care of her daughter, just because they thought her eyebrows indicated a medical issue.
It was “pretty wild,” the mother said.
A Texas mother found it absurd that people online were playing doctor with her 4-year-old daughter
Kiely Branch is a happy mama, raising four children under the age of five and preparing to welcome her fifth very soon.
“Life in our house is definitely never boring,” the Texas mom told Newsweek.
She regularly posts snippets of the chaos and comedy that comes with having a bunch of little ones under the same roof. Around 20K+ followers on Facebook and 5K+ followers on TikTok watch her post about her everyday joys.
While sharing ordinary glimpses of her life, Kiely noticed that one picture featuring her oldest daughter gained a lot of attention, but not in a positive way.
The post initially wasn’t “doing very well” and the viewers were “extremely low,” she said.
“I even considered deleting it one night. Then I woke up the next morning and it had completely taken off,” she said.
The TikToker woke up one night to find a wave of comments claiming her 4-year-old had a medical issue
Overnight, the post unexpectedly gained a wave of comments, where viewers claimed the 4-year-old child had a medical issue. And their basis for the claims were her eyebrows.
“A surprising number of people were telling me that I needed to have my daughter checked for a particular genetic condition because of her eyebrows,” she told the outlet.
Since Kiely has been creating content for a while, she wasn’t a stranger to the mixed bag of opinions people would throw at her. But this time, she felt things were different.
She found it strange that people were diagnosing her daughter based on a couple of photographs.
“I started seeing comments from other mothers telling me that I needed to take her to her pediatrician ‘before it was too late,’ and that’s when I started finding the whole thing a little more frustrating,” she told the outlet.
Not only were people giving their unsolicited advice but they even accused her of neglecting her daughter’s health.
“As the comments became more aggressive, especially the ones implying that I was neglecting my daughter by not taking her to a doctor, I did get frustrated,” she said.
The pregnant mom said she got “frustrated” as netizens began accusing her of neglecting her daughter
The bizarre theory was that the little girl had Sanfilippo syndrome because netizens felt “her dark, full eyebrows were a symptom,” the mother said.
Sanfilippo Syndrome is the term used for a group of rare genetic conditions that begin in early childhood and get worse as the patient ages.
The disorder mainly affects a child’s central nervous system and can lead to developmental delay, speech and language delay, temper tantrums, aggressive or destructive behavior, restlessness, sleeping issues, seizures, and so on.
Early signs could include thick eyebrows, excessive body hair, coarse facial features, and a head that’s typically larger than normal.
Kiely found it absurd that people were diagnosing her child simply based on the appearance of her eyebrows, with zero knowledge about whether she displayed other symptoms.
“It has been really interesting, and sometimes hilarious, watching the internet try to figure out a child they’ve never met from two photographs,” she said.
Viewers claimed the child had Sanfilippo Syndrome based on the appearance of her eyebrows
Kiely agreed that her daughter’s eyebrows were dark and full but not coarse. Moreover, she noted that both her and the child’s father “naturally” have full eyebrows.
“Unibrows, actually,” she added, noting how it wasn’t “unusual” to have thick eyebrows in her family.
“Her father and I joke that our kids were genetically destined to have thick eyebrows and potentially unibrows if we don’t groom them,” said the content creator.
“Been really interesting… watching the internet try to figure out a child they’ve never met from two photographs,” the mom said
Kiely also asserted that her daughter doesn’t have “the issues” people were “assuming she had.”
“She’s never had an ear infection, doesn’t have the GI issues people were mentioning, sleeps extremely well, and we’ve never had concerns raised about her head circumference or development by her pediatrician or any of the other medical professionals who have cared for her,” she said.
The bottom line, from the entire experience, was that it was “pretty wild” how people had no qualms about dolling out their diagnosis based on the photos.
“Imagine walking into the pediatrician’s office and saying, ‘Hi, TikTok told me my daughter has a genetic disorder because of her eyebrows. She isn’t showing any other symptoms, but can you check her out?’” she told the outlet.
“She’s so adorable. I hope she’s okay,” one commented online
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