How do you manage child sickness as a working parent (without extended family support)?

[user242526]

Hi,

My DD (11 months) started nursery in September and I've gone back to work. Obviously she's now picking up everything and anything and is constantly sick.

Currently has tonsillitis and is teething at the same time. I'm worried sick about whether or not I'll be able to attend work on Monday as she's also got a fever.

How do you manage? My DP is the main earner in our home and is self employed so it doesn't make sense for him to be off with her as he earns more and covers more with his wage.

I work for the local council and I don't think they have much help available in regards to dependents being unwell (I guess that's fair enough, I wouldn't expect them to always be so understanding) but I worry about my job as I've had to be off for the last two weeks due to Covid and now my DD has tonsillitis and is teething with a fever and I'm not sure what to do?

How do you manage? What can I do?

Thanks

Staff absence amongst support staff is a problem in my school too, but I think it’s understandable that the person in the family with the lowest paid job is going to be the one to take leave. I don’t think the school is in a position to complain when it pays staff such a low wage to start with, and then has rubbish sickness/holiday/bereavement pay on top.

People will put their families first, as they should.

We take half the day each, and start earlier/later to make up for it. One of us earns more than the other but both of our jobs are important so we always split it.

Although our DC is older now, we had no family around (in another country) so we handled it between us with working at home. I work for pharma company and DH in software so home working allowed. Not easy when you have meetings etc but we got through it by sharing the load. Annual leave was too precious to use for sickness and thankfully company not too bothered. The saving grace was that all the bugs DC got at nursery meant they were rarely sick during school years.

DH and I both work full time and are immigrants so there's no one else. He travels for a week every couple months so we've always had it so that the majority of sick days he can do, he does so when there's no choice it's me. I think there are tons of middle ground options - could he do a half day? Could you flexi work a bit so you go in like 6am - 2 or something and then swap? Can you work from home while he's in charge and get him used to it? These things will happen for the next several years so it will quickly become an issue if he's at 0% and you at 100%.

Appreciate it might not make financial sense for him to take off work as he's self employed but it makes even less financial sense for you to quit your job and have no money coming in (or pension etc) so you might need to run some numbers.

Thank you for your suggestions.

Although self employed DH doesn't WFH his work is related to driving and he wouldn't be able to take DD with him as insurance wouldn't cover that.

Whilst I appreciate that a lot of ND parents do deal with their sick babies and take time off work, everyone is different and ND impacts people in different ways.

My concern is my DH wouldn't realise if DD was deteriorating or if there was a change in her behaviour as he doesn't read between the lines. He'd just put it down to the fact that she's tired whereas I would be able to tell that she needs to see a GP (this exact scenario happened yesterday so I speak from experience here). He thought she was just teething and sleepy whereas she had a 39 degree temp and wasn't herself.

I can WFH but I'm undertaking training for my role as I started this job at the council, got pregnant within a week and went on sick/mat leave and only just returned.

Will have to possibly solider through the initial training stage and then when I'm trained I can WFH and get DH to watch DD with me overseeing them both as a PP said.

I'm sure he'll be fine when she's older and can communicate more but at the moment he would need me there too as he wouldn't realise when she needs intervention and what she needs as he doesn't really read between the lines like that.

If it gets unbearable my career would need to take a break as the lower earner and I'd need to go to work when DD is able to talk more and express herself more as I was going to before this new funding came out this year

We both WFH anyway and just juggle depending on who is doing what. We've not had to take a day off for child sickness yet, as we've managed to cover it between us. But much more difficult if you don't WFH for sure.

We don't have family within 5 hours, unfortunately it's a lot of me WFH with the kids or having to tell work I'll make up the hours out of usual times