Nursery refusing to give paracetamol to children unless supplied by parents , is it normal?

[Lotus2026]

Hi, is there anyone happy to share your experience of dealing with nursery?

My child's nursery has been very inflexible all the time, with rules don't even make sense...

Our child was teething very badly, didn't sleep much all night. When we dropped him at nursery following day, we asked them to give some paracetamol for pain relief when needed, they refused us and requested that we need to supply it, their paracetamol on site is for emergency only. It was impossible to get away from our jobs on the same day to deliver paracetamol to them. We can see he was in a lot of pain in the evening.

Is this situation normal? Did anyone has similar experience?

I think you’re being deliberately obtuse if you can’t differentiate between an unplanned [emergency] need for Calpol and a foreknown need. Stop nitpicking at the use of the word emergency.

We have found it also varies loads on nap protocol. One nursery we used wouldn't wake them and my eldest was a demon napper. Once he slept for 3hrs45min in the afternoon and then wouldn't go to bed until 10pm 😱😂

Another nursery we've used was happy to cap it to whatever you wanted, even if that was 30 mins!

Yes, and it had to be prescribed which I thought was completely wasteful

id have happily bought a bottle in a shop for a few pounds but nursery needed the NHS to pay for the item plus time to prescribe it

I always feel guilty using the NHS for easily accessible items

Yes that’s what our nursery used (their own supply of) calpol for. We signed a form giving permission when DDs joined, they’d ring every time (“your child has a high temp, please come and collect, do you want us to give some calpol now?”), and we’d sign a form when we picked them up confirming they’d told us about the calpol and it stated the time the dose was given as well.

They wouldn’t have accepted “can you just give them some calpol today because they’re teething”.

Entirely normal, and mine haven't been at nursery for over a decade now.

Of course there's a difference between emergency one- off use (which is likely to authorised by a parent over the phone as they are on the way to collect a feverish or injured child) and a 'systematic' use. Not just the cost of a bottle to the nursery but the risk of having enough calpol to hand, ensuring it is in date, ensuring that doses are properly spaced etc.