Kids " sick" days

[RubySquid]

I read on so many threads about sharing of parenting and who has to look after kids on " sick" days as though it's a regular thing.

But in reality how much time do kids actually have off sick to make it a big deal to worry about. For example DS had 2 days off nursery with conjunctivitis, a couple of weeks off school with chickenpox in ks1 and 2 days with a sickness bug at about 8. He's visited the GP 3 times in his life and hands now graduated from uni

Similar stories with DDs, id say apart from the pox less than a week off for other sickness during school time

Yet the way people go on about covering sick days it seems that it's scents happening every couple of weeks. So we're my kids unusual in not getting constantly ill

The thing is , cold symptoms can vary in presentation and severity. Awful Headache, blocked sinuses, fever, shivers etc. is a cold. So is a runny nose and sneezing. In the first case , you can dose up your kid and send them to school , but they won’t learn anything , they’ll be miserable/ poorly/lethargic and odds are they’ll be sent home anyway. So what exactly are you achieving by sending them in?

Well, for some people who have no choice, what they are achieving is the chance to go to work and earn money?!? Not everyone is privileged enough to either forgo a days pay or work for a company that pay them anyway.

I think it's very counter productive to send your children to school when they feel absolutely dreadful.

I try and instill in my children that education is a privilege and a pleasure, not a chore or a duty. They enjoy school, have good relationships with their teachers, do their homework without being asked and do all sorts of extra learning and reading for fun

My step children on the other hand have a mum who was fixated on 100% attendance. They both get in trouble at school, often don't do their homework and just generally are very disengaged. They are lovely bright kids and it's such a shame.

My kids are similar. Several times colds have become chest infections and ended up with hospital stays, thankfully not HDU but hospitalised on oxygen, nebulisers, steroids, antibiotics etc - the works. Even when it’s a “simpler” chesty cold, there’s an underlying uncertainty about how it’ll turn out and so I will often keep them off so they are warm and resting and I’m able to monitor their oxygen and make sure they are taking their inhalers. Thankfully the percentage of colds they catch and the percentage of colds that go chesty seems to be improving a lot with age and with them now taking daily steroid inhalers. But yes, it has led to quite a lot of sick days in their earlier years of nursery and school. Oh, and there was a little burst appendix episode that led to 2.5 weeks off for one child too!

If your kids are rarely sick then great, but don’t feel like it’s a moral superiority to those of us dealing with issues like this.

Before I was able to WFH I kept some annual leave in reserve to cover children's sick days.
Other people have arrangements with a friend to look after each others children in these circumstances.
Sending the child in when they feel too dreadful to learn is just damaging in so many ways

They may get sent home in primary (though even there I find it very much depends on the teacher) but it’s unlikely in secondary that they’ll be sent home. Some teachers might take it a bit easier on them but ultimately we want them at least listening.

Likewise. A "mild cold" in one child can make my child need a big dose of steroids and a week or two off school at best

So you know what I'm thinking do you? I didn't make assumptions I asked a question

You don't learn if you are feeling very unwell. Well, you don't learn anything academic. All you learn is that your well being isn't to be valued and that school is a chore to be born rather than a privilege to be enjoyed.

I always stayed home from school if unwell, and as a result have been very self motivated and had a lot of academic and work success.

I never want my employees to work if they feel very unwell. I would far rather they rest and recover rather than work when their brain isn't functioning and slow the recovery. Its probably also helped me have such a good staff retention rate. I think students should be treated with as much compassion as employees, as a minimum!

If a child has a fever , they get sent home (primary and secondary) in my area and surrounding parts.

We’ve had kids crying, curled up in pain, asleep at their tables, really poorly, shivering , blue lips, utterly miserable, barely responsive etc. They ARE not listening. They are definitely NOT learning. What’s the point in having them there?

The flu vaccine in schools probably protects a lot of them, but most kids get chickenpox at some point. That's a few days absence. Mine both had tonsillitis and Covid, again both illnesses that require time off - and they tended to pass things to each other so that one would be off and by the time they were better the other one would need to be off, hence longer for me and my husband to cover. There are plenty more common illnesses circulating primary school than just colds and d&v. Some kids just catch fewer bugs than others, but that doesn't mean there isn't a whole cornucopia of germs getting passed around in there!

Mine seemed to be constantly ill at nursery age and lower primary. Especially DS as he’s asthmatic. Every cold seemed to come with a fever and awful asthma symptoms and then there were always ear infections and vomiting bugs lurking too.

But they’re 10 and 8 now. DS asthma is well managed and he’s obviously grown out of a lot of the worst of it. We were really lucky last year and no days off school for either of them. Purely luck as I don’t think there’s a lot you can do about general bugs.

We all have colds at the moment, no one has been off school or work. DS would definitely have needed a few days off a few years ago, possibly nebuliser and steroids and antibiotics too.

It’s all a recommendation. There is nothing in legislation about time off. However, the NHS say to stay off for children and adults, in school and at work: https://www.nhs.uk/symptoms/diarrhoea-and-vomiting/

I wonder how many posters will tell me that 😂 I was thinking more along the lines of with a fever but fair point.

Some of the attendance on here is madness though. 65%? That’s what I’d expect for a child with cancer or something.

I formed a similar impression from this post OP so while you may not have intended to express superiority that is how it came across to some. I think when we're some years distant from a particular life stage it is hard to remember how acute certain things feel at the time. I recently noticed this visiting a friend with a 3 month old and realising that, while only 5 years since I had one that age, I am looking at things from a completely different context and much of what felt so huge then is minor now.

Over a whole year, definitely concerning, but it can massively depend on what point in the term/school year it is.

ETA However , it’s not just cancer that can result in poor school attendance. Chronic illnesses with symptoms severe enough to require treatment/time off/hospitalisation do exist.

If you have a healthy child who is lucky enough not to pick up many bugs then of course you won't have any problem dealing with sickness but if your child has an underlying health condition and gets sick a lot it can be a major problem. Most people fall somewhere in between. Particularly if you have several children close in age, a fairly simple illness that might mean one or two days off school per child can be a massive headache for the parents if the children are unwell sequentially. I am sure there are some parents who keep their children at home with every sniffle, but I don't think most do, especially if both parents are working.
Two of my DC have brittle asthma and for years it was a miracle if they got to Christmas without being in hospital,never mind being off school. They were on maximum medication and I had steroids at home to give as soon as they started to deteriorate but even so a cold usually led to a hospital admission. I don't suppose school liked it, our employers definitely didn't and surprise, surprise, nor did we or our DC. But it couldn't be helped! Ironically the first year they both went a full year without needing steroids was when the youngest was in year 9 which was during Covid. All that isolation worked wonders!
If you have a child who is rarely ill then that's great but I think it's mainly down to luck rather than any kind of superiority. For those who aren't so fortunate, managing work and sick children certainly poses challenges.

I haven't read the whole thread but I'm a childminder and have had hfm and chicken pox go through my setting this term! Some children have had 10 days off already!

One of mine has been admitted to hospital with serious respiratory infections twice this year; and he’s also had one vomiting bug and one ear infection needing antibiotics. So he’s been off a lot - still in nursery not school so no attendance policies to worry about but it’s still meant a lot of unplanned time off work. Thankfully they are quite understanding. The school aged one got the vomiting bug too and had one Friday off for it, was better by Sunday and back at school on Monday. Am hoping the younger one builds immunity as he gets older but it might be that he’ll always need more time off than his sister - and if so we’ll just have to juggle that with work, we’ve no family nearby and no paid childcare options for a sick child (and I wouldn’t really want anyone else to look after him when he was that unwell anyway).

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Well there’s no way to tell if it’s flu unless you do a test. That’s why I said flu-like symptoms. Fever, aching all over, struggling to keep eyes open. Just because your child has never had these symptoms, doesn’t mean nobody does. Even as an adult, a bad cold virus can knock me out for days. Seems DC inherited that from me.

My kids were like your op, but some children unfortunately are ill more often though oddly (and this is from a headteacher) the children of parents who are sahms, work from home or have generous workplace policies seem to be sick more often than those who can’t afford to take time off - this was an observation over a career so pre covid too. I suspect in reality with have different thresholds when we consider them too ill to go to school (im not talking about diagnosed serious illness or infections like chickenpox). My head teacher friend is pretty sure that some parents do keep them off when they should be in school

I have 3 DC and they never get ill at the same time. They seem to prefer the domino effect on the rare occasion something takes us all out.

Although I WFH and work are always okay of there is a poorly kid on a sofa in the house.

2 of my DC are quite robust, the 3rd not so much. DC2 had 10 days off in one term a few years ago as they caught a horrible cough every month and this culminated in an A&E admission and allergy related asthma diagnosis. Once they had inhalers things were a lot better (in fact they got 100% attendance the school year following the mammoth absence). They weren't "not ill" per se, they just managed to get ill in the holidays.

I do know some kids who are just more susceptible to illness. It can't be helped.

My BIL and SIL have very robust children but every year between Easter and Summer they all end up with noro (it's happened about 7 years in a row now and nothing they do seem to prevent it). They literally all go down within 24/48h. We avoid them at that time of the year 😅

Hats off to your headteacher friend for obtaining a medical degree alongside their teaching qualification.