Anonymous wrote:I am writing this after cleaning up vomit and diarrhea from my 7-year-old.

When my son started Pre-K, I was told that the first year or two of school would come with a lot of illnesses as his immune system adjusted. But here we are in first grade, and it feels like nothing has changed.

In kindergarten, he had more than 40 absences. This year has been much of the same. He is sick about 4–5 days every month. Like clockwork, every couple of weeks it's another cold, fever, stomach bug, or bout of diarrhea. The stomach flu has been going around his school, and of course he caught it.

I have no vacation leave left at work. Every hour of vacation and sick time I earn goes toward caring for him. We can't take family vacations because all of my leave is spent staying home with a sick child. My husband works a union job and is prone to layoffs. He doesn't accrue vacation time, only sick leave, so he generally stays home only when our son is seriously ill.

I've done everything I know to do. I took immunosuppressants during pregnancy, but otherwise he's had a normal childhood. He didn't attend daycare, but he has attended Pre-K, kindergarten, and now first grade. He's seen his pediatrician and a gastroenterologist about the frequent illnesses and diarrhea. The response is always the same: some kids take years to build immunity.

His teachers regularly comment on how much school he misses, and I constantly hear that missing more than 10 days can impact academic success. They're not wrong. We hired a tutor twice a week to help keep him on track, and thankfully he's still at grade level in reading and math, but only barely.

At this point, I don't know what else to do. I'm exhausted. I'm constantly worried about the next illness, the next call from school, the next time I have to miss work. I'm worried about attendance issues and whether a BECCA petition could eventually be filed, even though these absences are legitimate illnesses.

What makes it harder is seeing other families whose kids seem completely unaffected. I have a friend with an 8-year-old who missed one week of school all year because of a fever. Meanwhile, we deal with at least one stomach bug every year plus every cold, cough, and flu that comes through the classroom. I give him vitamins and probiotics when he'll take them, wash his hands, change his clothes after school, and do everything I can think of.

If anyone has experienced something similar, I'd love to hear whether it eventually got better. Right now, it feels endless.

Anonymous wrote:Op, I have no kids, and my middle two were similar - basically had a runny nose and some congestion starting in October and running through May. They were in daycare but it really didn’t start until around. Age 2 or 3 and then continued through pre-K for one and K for the other.

But they rarely got diarrhea or vomiting - maybe only 4 times per year? But lots of colds low grade fevers - rarely anything that resulted in antibiotics (like strep). They also have asthma, which was induced by colds, so that was stressful until we had it under control. My kids also had 3 hospitalizations for colds, so really got pretty sick a few times.

They are fine now - still get colds, in mid- to late elementary and middle school, but a lot less.

I’m a little surprised by how many absences you are reporting - mine probably stayed home twice per month but only for a day or two - just enough to get through the symptoms the daycare required (24 hrs for fever/.vomiting/after starting antibiotics) otherwise I would have been fired from my job. So mostly 2 day absences, and only 5 days three times (and two of those were hospitalizations). It is the same kid who has all those long absences, though, but she has ann over active immune system (asthma, food allergies), not a compromised one. I think some kids just get sick a lot.