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

Or maybe some parents (like me) are forced into this situation because they have kids who are ill more often. I’ve had a dull wfh job for 10 years so I can be around if they are off school because I’d have been sacked from anything else.

Mine don’t even have a diagnosis of anything, not even asthma. They look like normal healthy kids, and I’m sure in their nursery and early school years the headteacher probably thought I was being too soft in keeping them off with multiple chesty colds. But on several occasions these have worsened (often very rapidly) and they were very seriously ill, hospitalised and needed a lot of treatment. When your child has a history like this, you’re always wary with every cold, because you don’t know if it’s going to be a sniffle or a middle of the night trip to A&E followed by a couple of days on oxygen.

Yes. I turned down a promotion that would have doubled my salary because it would have involved being in the office every day and I know I need the flexibility to work from home

I think schools send children home much quicker now. My eldest went to school all the time, no issues, my youngest gets sent home for being a bit hot (honest to God, he runs hot, they say he has a temperature when they record it). But over the last 2 weeks, I've had 2 sent home with sickness, both had to be off for 48 hours, so we've had to manage 5 sick days between us in 2 weeks. One got sent home a few weeks ago for having a sore eye which was fixed with some ice cream and a paper towel... It's a lot

Just saw a comment from OP that the schools didn’t want kids having a day off from school because of a cold. But did the kids need it?

We’ve been super lucky. Youngest (year 2) had one day off in reception with vomiting (luckily overnight on a Thursday so only missed one day), eldest (year 5) has had 2 days off after a single vomit in year 1.

Can’t remember the specifics of nursery but certainly no more than a handful of days off between the two of them.

But we have situations where a child has been sent in and is clearly unwell, but the child says we can’t call the parents because they are busy or the parents are working in London (2 hours away), so nobody close to school to collect them. Obviously these parents are very important people with very important jobs, who can’t possibly take time off to look after their children.

My ds had chicken pox when he was 6, but his usual M.O. was to come home from school with a cold, his temperature would shoot right up and he’d be really poorly for a few hours, and then be right as rain again the next day. He’s 27 now and still exactly the same.

DD was the opposite. Always catching bugs, she’d have a mild temperature and feel a bit off, but it would linger for days/weeks.

Yet.

That doesn’t mean those kids don’t NEED to be at home, just that the parent can’t keep them home. Not good for anyone.

Over the years I’ve had kids cuddled up in my lap saying they’ve been sick all night, kids coming in dosed up to their eyeballs who could just about function that crashed after lunch, kids curled up on the floor crying in pain, kids asleep in the reading corner waiting hours to get picked up , kids that actually needed to go to hospital and many more. It’s not a fucking badge of honour. Felt really sorry for those kids, and for the parents as well if they sent them in because they had no choice.

It’s the combo of sickness, appointments, school holidays, random closures, inset days x multiple kids (y kids are in different infant / junior schools under different academies, they don’t have the same inset days so that’s straight away 10 days per year with no childcare/summer type clubs available that eat up leave.

then sickness can be in never rains till it pours, where mine will all be sick separately but around that same time so that’s 3 x2 days so 6 days. Plus my eldest was in hospital twice last year, one for stitches in a cut on his head and one for a broken elbow, both requiring hospital stays and numbeous appointments. ‘Y kids rarely miss school, and tbh I send them in unless they have d and v, and tell school to send them home if too ill on the basis that sometimes you do feel better when you crack on so they do have good attendance (like 95%+) attendance even wit big events like above but still it’s a lot of childcare!

My DD started nursery at 14 months, 5 days a week. I don't think I did a full week in work for 6 months, it was horrific. Now in school misses about 3 days a year. DS wasn't as bad but catches every vomiting bug going.

My DS is 18 months and since starting Nursery in September, he’s had 5 “days off” (He’s there 10 hours a week) due to, mainly, respiratory illnesses requiring hospitalisation.

I’m hoping he grows out of it as I hate not sending him in (he’s not there very long or often) purely because I want him to develop well socially! However, every time he goes back, he picks up some type of bug or illness which knocks him sideways! I think some children are just more susceptible to illnesses however, I do blindly believe that some parents send their children in when they should probably be off (all ages). I think sick days get less and less as they get older!

I had migraines in my childhood which caused me not to be able to get out of bed without crippling pain. Would you have made me go to school because I wasn't vomiting?!

Mine DS had 2 days off in reception with tonsillitis, 1 day in year one with impetigo and none in year two so far.

My younger DS is in reception and has had one day off following an overnight in hospital with a split head from an accident, two days off with a temp of 40 and the flu, and three days off with D&V. He has also missed a morning with a follow up appointment at the hospital. None of these things are in any of our control - kids get sick sometimes and sometimes they pass it to the whole household!

Can't stand parents who send in poorly kids to infect half the class!

What a God-awful way to parent your poor babies!
Infecting teachers and children in your wake!
How proud you must be !

Congratulations on having the luck to have healthy kids?

My son's attendance is awful. He's had a lot of time off due to illness.

My child has medical issues, so can have more time off than others. Plus some children get poorly more. I would say you're very lucky with your kids. I had tonsillitis 7 times in a year before they agreed to take them out at 16. You need to stop stressing about something that doesnt effect you

My children were hardly ever ill and had very little absence but I have ex colleagues whose week wasn’t fulfilled without a visit to A&E. No exaggeration.

I wonder if children in previous generations were able to be home ill more when needed because people did not have to move for work as much so there was other family to watch them. The retirement age was lower and grandparents were more likely to be able to help.

Also there wasn’t the same pressure on attendance. It feeds from government, to ofsted schools, parents and children. Attendance awards and prizes should be abolished for individual children, classes and year groups- it’s luck.

To any new mums out there, with LOs who've started nursery recently and reading this, I just want to say - don't panic! I think lots of us have a bad first winter with nursery, they catch everything, you use up leave like no tomorrow and fear it will be like this until their 21! I think in most cases, it does get better. My daughter was much more robust by the second winter (or she'd caught nearly everything in the first winter). Just wanted to offer some reassurance as I spoke with a colleague recently and she was beginning to get freaked about by all the bugs her son was getting from nursery and wondering if she was doing the right thing by even having him in nursery. And I didn't know she was fretting so much.

I think it fully depends on the child, you sound like you had it quite lucky and your children didn't have any long term health issues which helps.
DD1 has asthma so can occasionally have time off with a flare up of that, she's in primary 2 and in 2 years of school has had 3 sickness bugs, hand foot and mouth and chickenpox. DD2 hasn't started nursery yet but is prone to croup every time she gets the slightest cold which the doctor says she'll hopefully grow out of by age 6/7 so I'm preempting she'll probably have time off with that when she does start.
I think it's luck of the draw a lot of the time. thankfully I'm able to be home with my children but I can imagine it's sometimes a struggle to juggle sick days when you've got multiple children with multiple illnesses every other week.

”touch wood” my DC are never really ill so it’s never really been a problem. Although my eldest was struck down with scarlet fever one year, the AB just weren’t working all in all she ended up off school for about 3 weeks with two days in school in the middle. She then ended up with an allergic reaction to the AB’s. So in some ways it was an issue then but she was older so myself or my husband could work from home so it didn’t impact us that much.

I think what the OP is perhaps missing is that parents have to cover 13 weeks of school holidays with nowhere like that amount of annual leave. Which makes anything that creeps into your carefully scheduled AL a complete PITA. And not all work takes kindly to unexpected requests for leave.

Private nurseries are different because they are one far more weeks of the year.

both of mine started nursery young (between 6 and 9 months) and they had everything going. Eldest would get bad tonsillitis too. But once they’d built up immunity they’ve been fine throughout school (touch wood!). But yeah for a while when they were at nursery I swear I was off work more than I was in

Covid hasn’t helped. Mine rarely got ill before Covid. Now they seem to catch it two or three times a year. My youngest didn’t mix and build immunity when he should have done due to lockdowns so first two years of school, he didn’t do a full week without illness.