I'm a proper doctor. Honest! I work in intensive care and anaesthetics , although have done several years of general medicine.

If this kid turned up to my hospital and I was the on call he'd get a full neuro work up and probably admitted. If I didn't trust the mother, I'd get a collateral history from the father/grandmother/sibling/whoever alone and away from the mother. I'd also be talking to the kid alone and have a nurse watch him pretty closely to see if these episodes happened with the mum not around.

The investigations would start even if I had suspicions about the mum. An EEG is non invasive and doesn't involve radiation etc and would likely show some changes even if the child wasn't seizing at the time it was taken. If the EEG was normal, the collateral history didn't add up and the nurses weren't convinced either then I'd be referring to our child protection doctors and getting a second opinion off a very senior paediatric neurologist.

If the EEG was abnormal then it'd be a head scan followed by a referral to the paediatric neurology team who would probably see him, start him on some pills and then send him home as the majority of these cases can be dealt with on an out patient basis.

For the kids sake you have to start investigating and treating them on the basis that they're poorly, then stop if the story starts to unwind. Oddly I've had a few "factitious illness" patients recently, and they're not difficult to spot. They look convincing initially, but the story doesn't quite add up and the physical findings don't mirror the history. The old adage "listen to the patient, they're trying to tell you the diagnosis" is so very true, even if that diagnosis is "a bit of a nut job".