DD been off school sick today and wants to go to a party this evening

[Waitingfordolly]

Stomach ache (though no sickness or diarrhoea) and generally looking peaky, although she does seem a lot better now. She's 11. I have said no she can't go to the party. She is upstairs in floods of tears saying that everyone else's mum would let them go. AIBU?

Thats kids, one minute they are ill and a few hours later they have recovered.

She wants to go to the party, thats fine. Take advantage of this. Make a deal with her, something you wanted to impliment/do but never can. Get what you want in.

Explain to her that you are putting herself at risk here. The risk that your teachers will think your a bad parent and that your DD wasnt ill. And other parents will be thinking your putting their kids at risk of catching whatever she had that morning, even though it wasnt a stomach bug. Just so it looks like your siding with her and being her friend. Then say because of this big risk your doing, you want something for it. It can be extra maths and English homework everyday for a month. It can be tidying up and vaccum cleaning everyday to "this" standard for a month. You want whatever deal you make to be done everyday and last for a month, because by it should have become the norm.

This is what I would do, but it's up to you.

She wants to go to the party, thats fine. Take advantage of this. Make a deal with her, something you wanted to impliment/do but never can. Get what you want in.

^...Just so it looks like your siding with her and being her friend. Then say because of this big risk your doing, you want something for it.>

Are you fucking serious?

OMG this is probably my favourite even MN parenting advice:

Set your child up for a lifetime of malingering AND do some top quality manipulating at the same time!

Your all frickin barking with all these so called lessons your trying to teach and thinking your somehow superior in making some point.

All you are telling your kids is that you think they are scheming skiving little liars. that unless they are in a coma it's put on.

It happens ok. you can waken up feeling crap and be ok by the evening. sometimes a sleep and a decent meal works wonders. nothing fake about it.

Your all banging on about people having to go to work and unless you are dying there's no excuses. well who's fault is that? certainly not the person unfortunate to be ill but a company who insist on disciplining people and ergo I've come in before to people lying on the floor in pain, others working with people puking into a bin who have been told to come in if no one can cover them.

and you all want to apply the same thing to 11 year olds?

as in dependant and mature as they might be sometimes they will still need a duvet and some chicken soup without feeling like they are somehow letting the team down.

and all you work people reporting staff when you have no idea what was wrong with them just because you still went to work a day after surgery , well where's the loyalty?

sure so en people take the piss and these people will get found out with or without your "help"

people have different pain thresh holds or severity of conditions that quite easily could see them under control and fine by teh afternoon despite a genuine case of feeling like crap in the morning.

You do realise it is perfectly possible to put across a different opinion without being rude don't you?

giles then they will be fine communicating how/why they felt better to their manager when they get spotted out and about.

They may just be buying pain relief.

The manager will know why the person called in sick so can make any disciplinary decisions.
Does the pill not help painful periods?

Doesn't matter really though once the company gossips get their teeth into it.

People shouldn't have to made explain themselves all the time. or divulge medical information.

It's highly embarrassing to explain some things to management.

I happen to think it's incredibly sad that it has got to a point where people have to part with personal information to account for their being seen.

or that people are so suspicious of their work colleagues that the first thing they do is report them for being out.

I'm well aware of the disbelief and gossiping that goes on in some companies.

I've been the one calling from hospital hoping on. not going to be hauled in for a disciplinary.

when your treated like crap by a company it would he move if at least the staff had each other's backs.

be nice

bloody phone

Well I would assume that all these people who felt ill in the morning and were better a few hours later,then all went into work or school for the afternoon.
If my DC are off, I always say that we will see how they are close to lunchtime. Sometimes they have then gone in. Likewise I get migraine and have sometimes had to take the morning off as one has come on in the middle of the night, but I have been just about able to drag myself in for the afternoon. I'm not sure many people do this in either the work place or school.

And to GILES, I said several times that I'm not saying children are lying. I am saying that sometimes they wake up feeling a bit rough and parents have to make a judgement about if they need to be off or not. In my view, feeling a bit rough doesn't lead to an automatic day off, no further questions asked, but that isn't me saying they are lying. Can you see the difference. Of course it is the parent, not the child who should and who is able to make the decision based on their knowledge of the child and their general health, previous recovery from similar things etc. So sometimes it will be right for the child to stay at home and other times for them to go in.
I think one thing that is shown by the significant variety of responses to pretty similar minor illnesses such as a cold(ie some children are sent in and others aren't) is that parents view the importance of attendance at school in Different ways. Some parents really want their children to be at school and see it as very important, but for others,it doesn't take much for the parents to keep them at home - education is valued less highly - and note I said for minor illnesses - I'm not talking about things they absolutely should be at home for.
When I think of small children in particular, they can spend most of the winter with a cold or a cough. There might be times when it becomes severe and they need to be off school, but if we take the view that every sniffle needs a day at home, some will rarely be there. And for some children that effectively is the case or they will have periods of absence every couple of weeks, which mounts up over time. Again, of course people will serious health issues and on-going health problems might have frequent absences, but many children with these frequent absences don't have on-going serious health problems.

Incidentally, and perhaps to be controversial, what do you think is the correlation between those whose children have frequent short absences from school (without serious or ongoing medical issues) and those who take their children out of school for holidays or other unauthorised events?

See that's where on MN you can't win. send them in with a bad cold on a dose of calpol and you apparently are responsible for all the immune suppressed children getting sick.

don't send them in and you don't take attendance seriously.

It really isn't that simple.

People have to work miles from.home or school sometimes so of there's any chance they are going to get sent home and they can't get back then it's easier and better they go to grandma's for the whole day.

I for instance unless I pay for a taxi there and back would have a time consuming journey to get dd back to school after lunch resulting in me having to hang around in the cold with dd2 and nowhere to go because there's no time for me to go home before I'd have to leave again to collect her. so no, if she feels better I keep her home still. and if there's a rush she's going to get sent home I keep her home because again it would be a pointless exercise to get home only to turn round and go back again straight away.

I do take attendance seriously. but I also believe that a day off cab save you three or four days off down the line and there's little to be gained from sending an obviously sick child in hoping the calpol kicks in.

I've seem alot of people slammed for their kid being kept home despite sounding pretty ill. and consensus is usually if they haven't got an arm hanging off or managed two cornflakes then they are well enough for school.

Basically unless it's D & V nothingness is a good enough reason to be off school.

and this seems to apply to kids as young as 4 year olds who have been up all night coughing and are shattered.

I can see those practical problems about taking them in for a half day. And as a working parent, I know how difficult it is to leave work to pick up a sick child.
It is difficult and sometimes making the call about whether they go in or not is difficult.
I think if you find yourself having that dilemma, then at least you are considering sending them. If you have that dilemma and often send them, that is good. And I guess experience tells us things about our own children - whether they tend to recover, how Ill they seem at home etc etc. And this can influence our future judgement.
I guess, that I have found for myself and DC that we can often feel rough in the morning. We might have a bad cold and a bad night and really not want to get up. However, in most cases, when we have started like this (and I'm not talking D and V, or flu or anything contagious or serious) and gone in, by 10.30 we feel much better and manage the day fine. Actually, staying at home lolling about can make you feel worse sometimes. So I veer towards going in. And I have good friends who would almost always keep their children at home in the same circumstances - they might rack up 8-10 days absence over a year like that. At the end of the day, we do all have to make the judgment and with illness of a child, we don't have full information, just our knowledge of our child and experience of their previous illnesses.

I just find the whole thing quite sad really.

when as a society did we move from "oh no sorry to hear that hope X feels better soon"

to

"are you sure I saw X in town earlier she must be lying"

or

"but the kids were in the garden they looked fine to me"

more and more it seems that it's less about the individual person and what's right for them and more about using our kids or working through swine flu to prove that everyone else taking time off is either lying or weak.

I do feel this thread shows the level of scepticism people have in others. not even strangers but their own children and colleagues they work side by side with.

base lines seem to be getting g more and more extreme and others slated when they fail to work on what's deemed as less severe circumstances.

It's not conducive to peasant working environments when staff frequently moan about or report eachother and show so much disbelief when they don't know and have no right to k ow the circumstances

no. yanbu. do not cave.

Giles, you have obviously felt judged for time off of yourself or your children.

If you or your children have on-going health issues, then it would be usual for you to have time off.
If you don't, having the usual amount of time off (probably a couple of days a year - that is a guess by the way, not an official figure) would be.....well usual!
There could be a freak year when there are more bouts of flu etc and you could be unlucky meaning more time off.
If your usual trend however is much higher than the norm, it is worth considering why. Perhaps there are underlying health issues and a doctor should be seen to rule these out.

A school or employer will only be concerned if the frequency of absence is above the norm - and if there is genuine illness that means doing your job or being able to work at school isn't viable, then you really don't have anything g to worry about or feel judged about.

No one on this thread is referring g to people commenting about children in the garden looking fine when they have been off school, or seeing X in town who is supposed to be ill, but you. You seem really sensitive to what other people might say.

Are you suggesting being out in town/playing in the garden are usual for people who are off sick? What would you think if you saw these actions from people off sick? No-one else seems to have commented on this kind of thing, although you seem to have inferred them from what people on the thread have said, so this kind of thing is obviously on your mind. Is it theoretical or because people have made these kind of comments to you?
What would you think if you saw people who had been off sick at parties, playing I the garden or shopping in town.

I would assume they felt better. or that the reason they were off was not because they were sick in an obvious way but that it required an appointment or treatment and that what it was us not my business.

myself and my kids see luckily fairly healthy. time off is not usual for me.

What I was trying to jump on was the suggestion that if someone feels well enough later in the day then they can't have been sick in the first place.

that has been mentioned by other posters too that it's perfectly possible for that to happen. and I don't believe it's impossible to think. Of reasons as to why someone wasn't able to attend work but was able to go out in the evening. travel or child care arrangements making it unfeasable to attend later on in the day. non infectious or non obvious illnesses/conditions that still require a trip to drs or appointment at clinics etc.

I'm saying the default setting should not be to report them or potential put them in the position if having to reveal personal information to explain why they went at work.

I have also worked somewhere where people speculate as to whether or not people are lying and no one seemed to believe anyone was actually ill. where people were forced to come in regardless of how sick they were because they couldn't find cover.

It's just not a pleasant experience and I wonder why people would rather contribute to that than defend or give other colleagues the benefit if the doubt.

Can see it would not be nice to work somewhere like that.

I haven't seen anyone on this thread who is saying they report children or adults seen out whilst off ill. They might judge them, but no mention of reporting.

Tbh Giles you sound a bit paranoid that people are out to get you - either at work for being off ill and putting pressure on you to be in, or to tell some kind of authority about you or your children.

I accept that it could be possible to be really ill in the morning and by the afternoon or evening to be feeling much better. However, I think it is unusual for someone to be ill enough not to be able to carry out their job and then to be so significantly better so quickly, so they can be out shopping/partying or whatever....so not impossible, but certainly not the norm .......which is why people might be surprised by it.

But the key issue isn't what other people think anyway. The key issue is for people to be at school or work when they are capable of working and not there when they are not. In most cases, if someone cannot do the work required of them due to illness, they are unlikely to be fit for shopping or partying later.

I think that if a family are regularly taking time off work/school and then involved in social activities later in the day, it would not be unreasonable for an employer or school to question them about the illness.
It would be unreasonable to put pressure on someone taking their first day off sick to come in, to allow an atmosphere at work where people discuss whether people are skiving. It is important that people are allowed the time to recover when they are Ill and not feel criticised for it. It is also important that people don't take off the sickness when they are not ill or the illness is mild and means they could easily work. It is people doing this which often makes it difficult for people who are genuinely ill to take time off, and why firms often have policies such as no pay for the first 2 days of illness/HR meetings after 3 periods of absence in a year.

Most people taking time off are genuine. But people do take the piss too.

People will always take the piss. but I do think it's important to not treat everyone as if they are that person via policies at work or through "rules" based around what others will think.

and also a lot of incentives serve no purpose but to encourage people to infect eachother.

We should just make what we believe to be the right call for us or our children at the time.

agree definitely with a Pp in that companies who experience high staff numbers taking the piss need to look at themselves to solve the problem rather than the staff.