AIBU to think working from home with chickenpox child is unfair?

They probably thought they were doing you a favour. My work doesn’t allow caring for primary age or younger children while wfh, but I have a very kind boss who will turn a blind eye if my children are sick. DD is a bit older than 5, but is generally happy to just lie on the sofa if sick.

That is one of the advantage and downside of working from home. My work allows if our kids are sick to work from home (they are big enough to take care of themselves i am just a safety net so it is great to be able to work from home and not having to rake a say off. However iwe are sick unless we are dying they do expect us to work from home

Well, just say you need to take a day of your annual leave to look after your sick child.
your employer does not have to give you paid time off, if that is what you were hoping for…

I think it is fine from about age 4, obvs depending on the illness. If they have D&V then no as you are going to be kept busy. For things like colds or chicken pox then I would and have WFH with mine, boss fully aware.

Sounds to me like they are doing you a massive favour, why can’t you see that?

Your employer is doing you a favour as otherwise I assume you have to take unpaid emergency dependents leave or use a day of annual leave. If you want to do that you can

No, but youd be expected to take annual leave or unpaid leave in order to look after him.

Which you can also choose to do in your current situation, but you didn't ask, presumably because you didn't want to lose any money or holiday.

There's no negative here for you, I don't really get why you can't see that. The company wouldn't just go "Oh well take the day off, it won't come out of your pay or holiday entitlement" if you couldn't work from home.

the fact the op hasn't come back makes me agree with you.

Take annual leave then, why are you complaining to us?

Do you get paid carer’s leave?

I would take this (and offer this) as they are doing you a favour, if you can work from home you don’t have to use your annual leave or take unpaid leave. I can’t speak for any other manager but I would
fully expect you to be about 70% productive and I’d rather have that than short notice unplanned leave. For me, doing what you can at home is a win win.

If you don’t want that, or your particular child’s temperament means you can’t then ask for leave instead.

I agree, nobody is this kind of a martyr?

Has to be a reverse. OP is in a huff because a colleague is working from home with a sick child. OP reckons they should have to take unpaid or annual leave.

Did you ask for the day off? And still expect to be paid or what kind of leave did you ask for?

I did wonder whether that was her expectation.

When I first began working, if an employee had to arrange a family funeral s/he was given 10 days' bereavement leave; by the time my father died I was told that it was 5 days' compassionate leave across the year and that I should get signed off with stress if I required more time off to make the arrangements for the funeral and my mother's care.

I remember being surprised when other staff members were unofficially given extra time off so that they could attend nativity plays, a child's first day at primary school, etc.

Possibly the OP's line manager sometimes does the same and allocates extra time off at their discretion.

I suspect to have however long off work for her son's illness and to be paid for it.

I'm still trying to figure out what expectations the OP had. If she's entitled to parental leave, then perhaps she expected to be told allocate one day of it to this emergency?

I'm now retired, but recall that I was allowed to have 5 days compassionate leave a year - that included looking after sick family members, taking them to appointments, arranging funerals and attending funerals.

It depends on the child and the illness. If you aren’t comfortable that you can do your job properly whilst looking after your child just telll them. They can’t force you to work and you have a right to unpaid emergency leave to look after a child.

I expect they know you won’t be able to work as well whilst looking after a child but it will only be a few days. They clearly see you as a valued employee by offering you this option. They could force you to take annual leave or unpaid leave but they are trusting you to work from home. In some of my roles I would have been over the moon for this. In one role I was forced to take two half days despite having done to full days work.

You have two option:

1. Take their kind offer and work whilst you can.
2. Tell them your child is too sick for you to work and you want to take emergency parental leave.

Your organisation’s policy will be available to check probably online.
Ours says it is every employee’s right to reasonable unpaid time off to care for a dependant.
You tell me as line manager child has chicken pox and you need time off to care for them I will say ok and put it on system as unpaid leave.
But most employees would prefer to wfh and be paid and have sick child with them if they can. It’s managers discretion if that is ok.
I don’t agree wfh means ignoring a sick child. Depends on role but can usually sit next to them and do work. A sick child is very different to a healthy child running around. It’s needs must for a few days maximum usually especially if parents split the care. The parent can log on early morning and/or work in evening if need be.

That’s exactly what I would do. I would sit next to them on my laptop whilst they watch paw patrol or whatever it is. If he’s poorly, he doesn’t need entertaining. If he’s not feeling poorly he can go find something to do.

I work from home 90% of the time.

My kids are often at home during the holidays and guess what - they entertain themselves.

I see this weird thread is still going and no explanation from OP

90%? Only if you spend most of the day ignoring your child.

I am so confused by this thread, I think people are so resentful of people who can work from home they fail to see the issue of normalising working from home and looking after kids at the same time.

Why is it weird when there obviously exist some situations when a person might be able to get some useful work done when looking after a 5 year old with chicken pox, and an employer might prefer that to them doing no work? 'Proper' work isn't one of the choices in this scenario.

Regular remote work looking after a small child is something quite different, you're conflating the two.

@Wfhsucks I think people are (maybe deliberately) missing your point OP! For what it is worth I agree with you. They probably thought they were doing you a favour so you wouldn't have to take leave but I personally find it really weird that they would allow it, let alone suggest it.

Working and looking after a child at the same time really shouldn't be normalised, even less so an unwell child!

So many people I know who WFH have their kids at home with them at least 1 day a week to save on childcare and it is a massive bug bear of mine.

You can't work or parent properly in this situation and is just unfair on everyone involved (different with older kids of course but yours is only 5!)

I genuinely don't know what you wanted them to say. What were you looking for when you contacted your employer? 😕