For moaning at the head and thretening to take the kids back home?

[Marne]

Dd1's friend was sick yesterday at lunch time and sent home, her mother has sent her straight back in this morning, the poor child looks rough . Dd2 has Autism and when she gets sick she often ends up in hospital as she will rfuse to drink (dhydrates). I have a phobia of being sick which i am waiting for therapy for (i am shaking at the thought of getting sick).

So i thought i would mention to the head the '48 hour rule' which they print on the news letter every month. I am angry that a mother could send her sick child to school (this is the 2nd time she has done this) and risk other children getting sick. The head refussed to send her home so i said i would take my dd's home, he didn't like this idea and offered to keep the sick child away from my dd's . So i have left the dd's at school and am now worried sick that dd2 will get ill (we move house in a few days and i could do without any extra stress or illness.

Why do parents have to send there sick kids to school?

Am IBU? The head seemed to think i was.

chipshopchips - but school is a form of childcare and we are actively encouraged to see it as such by governments of all political persuasions who say things like "single parents should go back to work as soon as their youngest child is 7 because childcare is no longer an issue" "we recognise the difficulties of working parents and will place more emphasis on schools providing wraparound care".

As for having alternative arrangements in place... Have you tried getting professional childcare at short notice? It's usually unavailable and when it is it is hugely expensive. What if your friends work and you don't have family? Should it be a given that everyone who has children should not work until their children are 15 then since "you know that when you have children they may be ill"? Who is going to support them?

I am a working single parent. My children come first and I have always adhered to the 48 hour rule. However, it is NOT easy and we need to look much harder at improving flexible working practices in this country to allow for sick children, otherwise it unfairly penalises women (since it is overwhelmingly women rather than men who affected by this).

I work and wouldn't send a sick child to school. The head is a lily livered arse aswell. Why won't he/she stick to school policy? What kind of head is that?

I doubt professional childminders would want a sick child either- if they are ill then you have time off work!

when I was at home with the kids I knew plenty of non working mums who felt their kids didn't need to be off school unless actively vomiting, so bundled them off to school the next day dosed up on calpol!

some people, working or not, will always be that way!

chipshop, I agree. To answer the OP, I don't think she's being unreasonable to be annoyed about this. If a child is obviously unwell, they shouldn't be at school. However, I took issue with:

"You know when you have children that they may be ill- if you can't take time off work then you should have alternative arrangements in place to look after them.

School is for education not babysitting."

which IMO are completely unsympathetic and far removed from most people's reality. Sick children should not be in school but let's not use that as an excuse to bash working mothers, who have to juggle work/children/childcare commitments in a way that is completely alien to most working fathers.

Well there's sick and there's sick, I agree with what diddl said.

And as another FT working mum I sympathise with the annoyance of having to keep a child home who is clearly not contagious.

It's not about how 'important' we think we are or our careers are.And let's not get all overexcited and say stupid things like 'working mums care more about their work than their dc if they send them back sick'.

It's just that sometimes you just know there is no bug, they just puked up their lunch etc.

YANBU, although I think most mums can tell the difference between a tummy and their dc being sick due to eating too fast etc.

If other parents are sending their dc into school with bugs then it's effecting all the other parents too. They miss an extra day of work or have their child at home for another day, but that might just prevent another 10 parents having to take 2-3 days off work!!

My cm has a grown up dd who is also a cm, and she just had to close down for 2 days because one mum dropped her ds off knowing he'd been ill over the weekend. The dc was sick during the morning, and the cm's dd caught the bug. So that was another 4 families affected......

the nice guidelines apply to d&v.

If the child vomited once only then she does not have d&v and thus the guidelines would not apply.

My ds's nursery clarifies the 48 hour rule by stating that 3 incidences of d and/or v in 24 hours constitutes likelihood of an infection and so requires the 48 hour rule. In other words, everyone is allowed the odd random puke or dodgy bottom .

The HPA guidelines apply to "Diarrhoea and/or vomiting". If the child has vomited then she has vomiting.

If the school has a 48-hour exclusion policy then it should enforce it, otherwise what's the point in having a policy? In this case it hadn't even been 24 hours since the last incident of vomiting specifically known about by the school, and the child appears unwell.

I do sympathise that sometimes children vomit even when they are not unwell (DD is sometimes sick when she gets over-excited), but that's less common the older they get. My DCs' nursery has a 24-hour policy after the last incident of one of diarrhoea or vomiting, and a 48-hour policy after the last incident if there have been both. That seems to work pretty well to not penalise parents of happy vomiters too harshly but stop D&V bugs from sweeping round.

fluffyanimal - that makes sense.