“Why Did We Ever Send Sick Kids to School?”

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I can honestly say that in 31 years of parenting five children I have never knowingly sent a child to school sick. Parents who do this are just the worst.

+1 I have four kids. But I also work from home.

The households where both parents work outside the home, who don't have family close by, and who have multiple kids are in an extremely tough position. Just with dentist appointments and well visits and other standard stuff I could have an appointment once a week. Add in sick kids, few weeks go by in the winter without interruptions. I have a flexible schedule but people who don't have to make complicated decisions.

But it was your choice to have four kids in a dual income household. You had them knowing what your responsibilities are. I had two coworkers going through chemo last year, with kids coming in sick because, “I have a meeting,” parents don’t realize the implications of their actions. You have a moral obligation to keep your sick children home and have a babysitter/family member care for them. The classroom is not a warehouse for sick students. When the nurse tries to send them back to class, I’m happy to let her know that the child is welcome to stay with her or sit in the front office for the remainder of the day.

No child should be excluded from school for a cold. End of story. And frankly, if you want to encourage families to keep their kids home, you should 1) advocate for more sick leave, 2) alter the school year so that working parents don't have to take off as many days simply to follow the school calendar, 3) make it easy for children to catch up or stay on track if they stay home sick, including stopping teachers from punishing or making things difficult for kids who miss time from school because they are sick.

There is no childcare for sick children. You can't send them to daycare or school. Period. As a parent, it is YOUR job to care for your child when they are sick. Exclusively. Period. It is the fault of YOUR boss and YOUR job if you can't take a sick day to care for your child. It is ridiculous to suggest we should have "school" (babysitting) available for 365 days a year to accommodate your employer. Do you know how much that would cost taxpayers? We are not a babysitting service, and we are certainly not an infirmary. As a teacher, I'm absolutely not responsible for advocating for your sick leave, nor would you advocate for teachers to get additional sick leave to account for all the illnesses we contract being exposed to your sick children. I already see threads here complaining every time their child's teacher calls out, as if it is any of their business why. In the past, I have reached out to let parents know I would be out on x day (as a courtesy, not a requirement), and had them ask me the reason for the absence. Totally inappropriate.

Obviously my point is not true during the pandemic, but you are uninformed and show that you don't understand that the need for children to receive an education outweighs your demand that you never be exposed to any germs. All public health guidance before the pandemic has been specific about criteria for excluding children from school, and that includes conditions like high fever, (101 or higher), vomiting, conjunctivitis, and flu with cough and fever. A cold or lingering cough or even a low grade fever does not require exclusion from school if the child is well enough to participate in activities.

Wrong. If your child is sick, they are contagious and need to stay home. I will never allow a student with a fever into my classroom, per school policy. It is incredibly selfish to suggest otherwise. Your child is coughing and has a fever? They’re going home. You can keep them home in the morning, or you can come collect them once we take one look at them and realize they are sick. The nurse will hand you a note saying they can’t come in the next day, because they won’t have been fever free for 24 hours at that point. Enjoy.

That may be true at the school where you work, but there's no point ranting at those of us who are given entirely different official guidelines from our kids' schools.

Exactly. Our school will automatically send home for fever 100.4+ or vomiting (you get a call saying to come pick child up immediately). Everything else-within reason-they will let kid rest a few minutes to evaluate & then call and ask parent what you want to do. I always pick my kids up in that scenario but not everyone does. A cough or “seeming sick” won’t get a kid sent home automatically unless there is a fever over 100.4

Forgot to add: at our school this decision is up to the nurse, not the teacher. Teacher doesn’t have discretion to send kids home. It’s up to the nurse.

[Anonymous]

I work in the clinic.

Several scenarios at play here. Pick one.

- there's no adult supervision in the morning.

-student either arrives at school and immediately comes to the clinic to report not feeling well (or to vomit, use the bathroom, get temperature taken) or

- goes to classroom or first period and either asks to go to clinic or teacher sends immediately because "student doesn't look good"

- you gave student "pink medicine" (cherry Benadryl? Pepto?) or "purple medicine" (Dimetapp?) or "something" (ah, maybe Tylenol or Advil?) "in the morning" and wow, now it's 10 and the meds have worn off...but this has allowed you to put in a 1/2 day of work and get your kid to daycare and by the time I call you to come get your child, you won't have to lose a day of leave.

- you will complain once reached that "I'm at work and about an hour away" and no, there's no one else to call who could pick up (also, the emergency contact is a grandma in another time zone)

- you will ask if your child can "just be given some medicine" and sent back to class. (We don't have stock meds and if you want us to give your DC a medicine, this requires a completed form and meds delivered in advance)

- you must know that we have a protocol. 911 first, then you as a parent. If your DCs fever spikes and sustains at 104 (and yes, this has happened) EVEN WHILE AWAITING parent pick up, your child will be transported in an ambulance, likely without you.

-DC tells us everything, most especially while we wait for you to pick up...

[Anonymous]

Or, you know, your a parent who gets the health info sheet from school and follows it to the letter, which means sending a coughing, sniffly kid to school and keeping a feverish kid home. When you call in to say your kid is sick you get a "just remember, Mom, it's important for her to be in school. If you keep her home for every sniffle she'll miss too many days."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Or, you know, your a parent who gets the health info sheet from school and follows it to the letter, which means sending a coughing, sniffly kid to school and keeping a feverish kid home. When you call in to say your kid is sick you get a "just remember, Mom, it's important for her to be in school. If you keep her home for every sniffle she'll miss too many days."

the info sheets are just CYA documents so that the school can say 'not our fault' if your kid gets another kid sick

[Anonymous]

I remember that epic thread from last year!

Anyway, how things have changed. My preferred solution now is a flex time 20 hour work with federally guaranteed sick leave. Highly unlikely to ever happen but then again who would have predicted a Romney proposal for universal child allowance?

[Anonymous]

20 hour work week

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think I must be a weirdo but my kids have never had just the “sniffles”. When my kids get a cold it’s multiple days of severe congestion/lethargy/not sleeping. They never seem to have the “cold” that is “just the sniffles”.

Even for me, I almost never have that kind of illness-I’m
Not sure if I ever have honestly. For me a “cold” means I get a sore throat and it ususally culminates in a sinus infection and I usually feel like absolute garbage for at least 2-3 days, and then not great for a solid 10 days.

What is this illness that is just the “sniffles”? Is that really a cold? Or is what I describe a cold?

The sniffles are sometimes just from weather & dry air, other times from a cold. Also could be allergies. Lots of things.

Colds are not as you describe, for me or my kids. It’s a scratchy throat, runny nose, lingering cough sometimes. No one feels like garbage- more like a nuisance. A little extra sleep and rest is all we really do. May skip optional things to rest but rarely work/school.

IME it isn’t normal for a cold to make you feel like garbage but my definition may differ from others. To me feeling like garbage = flu caliber symptoms. Colds are just an annoyance.

I agree with the bolded. We don't stay home for 'just a cold' but also they aren't big deals, just nuisances. No major congestion, lethargy, sore throat, or fevers. We rarely take medicine for a cold, there's no need. Sometimes, however, a cough can linger for weeks, especially for my kid with mild asthma. No way am I keeping him home for weeks because he has a cough that started after 3 days of a runny nose (and no other symptoms). He feels fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Exactly. Our school will automatically send home for fever 100.4+ or vomiting (you get a call saying to come pick child up immediately). Everything else-within reason-they will let kid rest a few minutes to evaluate & then call and ask parent what you want to do. I always pick my kids up in that scenario but not everyone does. A cough or “seeming sick” won’t get a kid sent home automatically unless there is a fever over 100.4

Forgot to add: at our school this decision is up to the nurse, not the teacher. Teacher doesn’t have discretion to send kids home. It’s up to the nurse.

This. I've had calls asking me to pick children up immediately. In this case, the child had a fever above 100.4 or just vomited. I've also had calls where my kid was feeling a bit sick and had either no fever or a temperature in the low 99 degrees. In that case, the nurse has always asked if I'd like to pick up my child or send them back to class. My kids have never even been sent to the nurse for the sniffles, and they certainly wouldn't have been sent home unless they also had a fever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Even for me, I almost never have that kind of illness-I’m
Not sure if I ever have honestly. For me a “cold” means I get a sore throat and it ususally culminates in a sinus infection and I usually feel like absolute garbage for at least 2-3 days, and then not great for a solid 10 days.
.

That's weird. You probably are getting regular colds, but also have some sort of sinus irregularity that leads to the sinus infection. Most people don't get sinus infections from a simple cold.

For my family, a cold means a stuffed or runny nose, a sore throat from the post-nasal drip, some fatigue, and no fever. Everyone is perfectly fine for school or work, but might not be inclined to go to sports practices or exercise.

[Anonymous]

Just to be clear, nobody has a problem with schools and teachers being more accommodating about kids staying out of school for illness, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With younger kids it’s lack of child care/lack of job flexibility. With older kids (8th grade and up I’d say) it’s the teachers. They are so inflexible with making up work or helping kids get caught up. Kids who are at all serious about academics, or in any advanced classes at all with higher workloads, feel the pressure to show up sick or fall behind.

This, have a 10th grader miss a week for a cold a couple of times in a semester and see what their grades look like

Another agree. My kid missed 2 days and was set back in her Algebra class. Lost confidence about the topic she missed and flunked the test.

[Anonymous]

Not gonna keep my kid out of school for a cough that will last for weeks or a runny nose. Just not gonna do it. Fever? Yes, they stay home. But the common cold or runny nose that every other child has? Nope.

So many disingenuous people on here who have the ability to be a stay at home parent, have a nanny, have other childcare options aside from the parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not gonna keep my kid out of school for a cough that will last for weeks or a runny nose. Just not gonna do it. Fever? Yes, they stay home. But the common cold or runny nose that every other child has? Nope.

So many disingenuous people on here who have the ability to be a stay at home parent, have a nanny, have other childcare options aside from the parents.

A lot of the frustration is coming from parents, working or not, who have older kids who don't need to be supervised at home but who often suffer significant academic consequences for staying home sick.

[Anonymous]

As a parent, my options were usually go to work sick or don't get paid. I actually had a cushy fed job with paid annual and sick leave. I saved and saved for maternity and returned with 3 days of sick leave, zero annual leave (had to run through annual leave before taking LWOP for maternity). That first winter in daycare, I think baby and I were sick for 5 months straight. I quickly ran through all my leave. DH took off nonstop to stay home with the baby, but I had to work. There wasn't an option. I spoke to HR who said I could go LWOP, but I was just a GS 11 and needed money to pay those daycare bills. I definitely remember vomiting from the flu at work. I stayed away from everyone and begged for telework, but I guess I just looked like a lazy new mom. Ended up in urgent care with pneumonia and had to take LWOP regardless. With my second baby, similar thing happened with that first winter AGAIN. We ended up flying in my mom to babysit my sick kids all winter. It's just hell. By the time Kindergarten started, we had no sick leave whatsoever. And I'd say that financially we're middle class, what can working class parents do?!

Just want to say that this year with covid, so far no one has been sick for an entire year. I can't even believe how high my sick leave balances are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just to be clear, nobody has a problem with schools and teachers being more accommodating about kids staying out of school for illness, right?

That would be great, but it’s a crapshoot. In private school, I’ve had teachers accommodate make up work and one who failed my DS on one assignment he missed while being sick. When he reached out to make it up when he returned, she said nope, no credit unless you are here every day. No excuses. I asked the HOS and division head and they said there is nothing they can do. Unfortunately as a parent you don’t know what type of teacher your student has until it’s too late.