Child being sick yesterday evening, yet in school today!!

[twinklingfairy]

A friend of DDs was on FB to me yesterday afternoon saying his DD (in my DDs class at school) was being sick and having diarrhoea.
I said that it was a real shame and that it would mean she was missing more school (she has missed a few days here and there recently).
I think, now, he maybe didn't respond to it as such. I said that the rules were 48hrs after the last sickness bout so it woudl be Wednesday until she was in then.

Yet, there they are bold as brass this morning!
Came home here to see that the mother has written on facebook, to another mother that her DD was still being sick when she got home from work.
Yet, there she is In School!!

The mother had said that her DD wanted to go to school and only if she made a miraculous recovery would she be there.
Whether the child feels better or not is not the point!
I mean, why would they make up the rule unless to safe guard the other children??
My DS had the bug last week. My DD looked like she migh t be headed towards it on Saturday but was just a bit out of sorts for the day, absolutely fine on Sunday.
I felt, as she was not sick, that it woudl be ok to send her to school, a close call, but all is well.
The mother in question seemed to me to just be kidding, afterall, I had said to the father about the school rules, I thought DD would be safe enough.
Given that this mother and the other mother were saying that the class would be less pupils today.
But this girl is in, and sits at my DDs table!!

What should I do?
Perhaps I am over reacting?
Perhaps I should have just kept my DD off, just to be on the safe side?
But when you see that people are talking about the class being 'a bit smaller tomorrow' you think that it would be ok.
But to place the child in the class knowing she has been sick yesterday evening??

AIBU to think that it is totally wrong??
Or AIBU cos I should just not have taken the risk with my own DD?

Sadly schools now bang on so much re attendance rates cos of Ofstead and pressure from the LEA's that many parents are too scared to follow the health advice. Attendance drops below 85% and it's letters and meetings/grief/SS (& possibly court) for the parents.

What sensible parent wants an educational welfare/ss visit to the family home and some unpleasant threatening official correspondance? It's all triggered by computer records so no common sense is applied to the nasty letters being sent out regardeless of circumstance.

I always feel sorry for the parents of ashmatics who dare to get bronchitis or similar in the winter. Dealing with a sick child/work etc is tough enough without the jumped up jobsworth brigade conducting their "investigations".

A doctors note is enough for most adults to give their employers so why can't the education system apply some common sense?

Class teachers know darn well which parents can't be a325ed to get up in the morning to take their kids to school, and which unlucky little souls seem to catch every bug going. Yet schools aren't allowed by LEA's to apply this knowledge when choosing which parents to harass!

Until this situation changes you are gonna get parents sending in kids they shouldn't. Round here many parents take em in and wait in the coffee shop round the corner for the phone call from school to take em home again. Plumb dumb, but the easiest way to avoid grief from the "system".

Bochead, we had one of those threatening letters when ds1 was in yr1. He was literally just ill all the time, I think his attendance was about 85%, maybe a bit more than that actually.

We had the meeting with the HT as a sort of 'warning' (I think she thought I was one of those parents, you know, but now she knows I'm not) and she threatened us with EWO involvement. I freaked out so much that I rang the EWO who reassured me we'd never appeared on their system for any reason and had nothing to worry about, but it was horrible.

I don't take any notice now of the attendance crap, I agree with you..if my children are unwell enough to stay at home they stay at home, no question.

I know the family I'm cross about doesn't have any attendance issues and are just being bloody minded/overconfident/too laid back. Well one of those I guess.

Good for the school that they sent her home again.

Whaleoil, your reasoning is flawed.

Yes im aware its meant to be 48 hours after the last bout. However the point is if someone is sick 4pm on Tuesday they would have been infectious when sat with their classmates on Tuesday, more so than the Thursday they went back to school

Explain then Blu...

its 24hrs after the last bout of sickness at my kids school, tho the rule for the pre-school is 48hrs.

either way they child shouldnt have been in school, tis a pita sometimes my ds2 will throw up but then be fine within hours, i still keep him off school for the required time tho.

It's one of my pet hates people ignoring the rules about sickness. Probably that's why I had one child off school last week and another this week with sick bugs. YANBU

Whale you couldn't have avoided her being at school when you didn't know she was unwell, nobody would be cross about that, you certainly could avoid it when you know she's still infectious. You have just knowingly increased the risk of her classmates. Who knows what vulnerable individuals that would be taken home to.

Many years ago I was following the 48 hour rule with my DD - thinking to myself she was fine - lo and behold about the time the 48 hours was up she was sick again so school are quite right to say 48 hours

I've had exactly that happen with my DD too.

WhaleOilBeefHookedIWill Mon 12-Mar-12 13:50:08
Yes im aware its meant to be 48 hours after the last bout. However the point is if someone is sick 4pm on Tuesday they would have been infectious when sat with their classmates on Tuesday, more so than the Thursday they went back to school

To really get this, you need to grasp the manner in which the bugs are spread.
Yes occasionally it's a type where the individual is contagious before symptoms appear, but more usually, they are NOT contagious through contact with other children, or breathing, especially not beforehand.
The contagion is from direct contact with the 'products' (sorry) so the actual vomit or diarrhoea, OR being in close proximity to these things so particles are inhaled, or touching surfaces on which these particles have landed then transferring them to the mouth/eyes/nose.

This is leaving aside the fact that you can think a child is better only for them to vomit again or have diarrhoea a day or so later. So that's part of the reasoning.

If you have a sick child and send them to school the next day, they will be expelling virus in their poo, as it takes a while to leave the body. So one person not washing their hands properly and you have contagion.

These rules were invented by the HPA (Health Protection Agency) and they are the experts on how diseases are spread so instead of making up how you think they are spread, it might be wiser to just follow the rules.

I think a lot of people don't really understand the mechanism of it tbh. Which is fair enough, but not a great excuse for flouting the rules.

Sorry not meant to be so stroppy sounding!

And I like your name, Whale, it's really clever.

Thanks Betty, I was wondering that very thing this morning.

We've a bug in the house that has been through the DDs and me. I was wondering what to be careful of to try to prevent DH getting it.

It's probably too late for him, as he's been on clean-up detail.

DD1 was saying this morning that she would be fine for nursery, then pretty much straight away vomited again :o

Not that I could have sent her - she was up all night puking and dry retching and is totally washed out today. Poor little darling :(

I kept her off for 24 hours. No vomit no diarrhoea was actually as right as rain an hour after she vomited which influenced my decision to keep her off one day but not two

Whale, my DD was sick on Tuesday morning, seemed right as rain all day. Then she had diarrhea Wednesday morning, more than 24 hours later, seemed ok most of Wednesday too. 24 hours isn't always enough.

But my DD WAS. I knew she was fine and was confident it wasnt some raging virus more a case of something she had eaten/dicky tummy.
Why id keep a child off for another day when she was perfectly well is beyond me

Why id keep a child off for another day when she was perfectly well is beyond me

So that she doesn't make other children ill! It's not for her benefit.

I sometimes do the 24 hours thing if they seem perfectly well, are eating plenty and it was likely to be food related rather than contagious. However it is still a risk.

Our school has only a 24 hour rule in any case, though they change it to 48 hour when there's something horrid going round.

I never cut corners on the 24 hours though as I couldn't forgive myself...ds2 was ill once one morning before a big party my friend was having. Friend told me, against my better judgment, to come along anyway (I was helping set up etc) and so we did, he'd been fine all day.

Around 10pm he threw up again, and though we made it to the bathroom, at least one other child caught the same thing. I feel awful about it even now.

I should have stuck to my guns

well my school only has a 24hr rule and i have to say my ds2 is one of those kids that is sick the once and then bounces back within an hour or so, he seems to do it periodically for no reason that i can find! he doesnt even seem that ill, just a bit pale and then he pukes and is then fine, so he stays of the statutory 24hrs and that is it.

the pre-school has a 24hr rule but i think there is more risk of passing things on in that age group, ie personal hygeine and hand washing not so good!

One week later and the girl who was sick is finally back at school.
During her time off she managed to fall and split her lip, to the extent of needing stitches, yikes!
Very brief hello to her dad this morning and he managed to complain that she had been absolutely fine, why they sent her home he didn't know!
I said that she had been sick on the Sunday, she had to have the time off.
He said, but she was fine!?
I said that it was not about her but about her being a carrier for making others ill.
His reply was to deny that she had been sick on Sunday. He works nights so gets confused about days, haha.
Hmm, I don't work days and I know it was Sunday that you said she had been sick, as did her mother, via facebook.
He complained that if the girl herself hadn't told them, then there wouldn't have been a problem.
And that a little girl who was able to play should have been in school. She was well enough to trip and split her lip?
The implication being clear that had the school not been so silly as to send her home, she would not have split her lip.
He honestly seemed cross with the school that she had split her lip.

eh?!

Its bloody annoying, and in an ideal world everyone would confine themselves to home until all illness was long gone.

But life doesn't work like that.

Our school is currently in about week 10 of mass illness, a lot of it has been made worse by children being sent back to school before the 48hrs, some of it has undoubtedly spread because well siblings are coming to school, you can't keep them off 'just in case'. The teachers have probably spread their fair share of germs, the parents too. It IS horrible at present, and I do think more could be done (alcohol handgel in the school, more pleading letters home to parents, more compassion, less pressure for staff to return quickly etc.,)

However YABU in your reaction OP. This year things are bad. In this real world, many parents are simply afraid for their jobs if they keep taking time off to be with a child who seems well 'enough'.

It is very annoying when people don't follow the 48 hour rule. I work at a nursery and some parents would come up with all sorts of stories and excuses to try return their children early (they ate too much at a party, their teething, they had a boiled egg for breakfast!) Some of these may have been true but when the bug is already going around you can't really take chances.

I understand its hard to take time off with poorly kids especially when they are often fine once they stop being sick but the 48 hour rule is there for a reason. I have been involved in numerous deep cleans and my workplace having to close for a couple of days which means ALL parents have to take time off or find alternative childcare.

The more serious side is some of the kids at my workplace have medical conditions and are vulnerable so them catching a sickness bug can have a serious impact on their health which I don't always think some parents realise.

When a man shows no concern for the fact that an illness, that his daughter is carrying, could seriously harm another little girl in the class and in fact wants to blame the school for his DD falling, I'm not so sure that my reaction is ott.
It is his attitude more than anything that has caused me to post this morning.

I can understand that he needs to work and that illness can badly affect some people finacially.
But, in this case, his childcare is his father, he works nights, the mother days. It is workable.
Illness isn't convenient for anyone, so why knowingly spread it??

This family are selfish twats, simple as that.

I would send a child to school 24 hours after but not before. http://www.supersavvyme.co.uk/article/heath-well-being/solving-problems/when-should-a-sick-child-miss-school.aspx It says on this website that if they just feel sick or have a bit of tummy ache it is OK to still send them.

One school policy I know of is:

If a child has been sick only once in a 24 hour period, then they should remain off school until the following day.

If a child is sick more than once within a 24 hour period, they should be kept away
from school for 24 hours after the last episode of sickness.
Diarrhoea ? If a child passes more than one abnormally loose stool in 24 hours, they should remain away
from school for at least 24 hours after the last episode of diarrhoea.