If nursery or childminder called to say you need to collect your child

[kevintheorangecarrot]

Due to illness / diarrhoea etc, how long is appropriate for them to wait? My husband and I work 45 minutes away and a while ago it took me over an hour to collect him because there was flooding so I couldn't get the train and had to wait for a taxi. Another time, my husband cannot just up and leave work (long story as to why) so he has to wait til he finishes which is usually in 2 hours or so, then another hour to travel if there's been no delays that is! We have nobody else to collect our child as we've moved to an area where we haven't got any family around. I do feel like it is taking the piss but what else are we supposed to do? We could move nearer to our work but the area is very, very expensive (think London for example) and there's no way we'd be able to afford to buy a house there, let alone a rent.

Really all they can ask is as soon as possible, obviously most jobs you can't just walk out immediately - but not leaving work for 2 hours after getting the call isn't reasonable. If he had been ill at work would he have left before then? If he really cannot leave then you should have gone. Being delayed due to travel problems (reasonable and out of your control) is completely different to not leaving work for 2 hours.

I think it's about having a combination of options and that's going to be individual based on circumstances, length of commute, nature of work, friends and family nearby etc.

I'd guess for most people it would be unfortunate and unusual to have the perfect storm of no options available for three hours.

In the OP's situation, if DH was the designated one that day, for want of a better phrase, then he was unreasonable to finish up at work before leaving.

I think it's about planning as much as you can and if you have children, you have to accept the compromises whether it's location, salary, working hours. It's not easy! But as pp said, what do you expect the nursery to do with a sick child and it's not fair on said child?

@Emma you don't have a clue do you?
Parents work where they can get a job.
They choose a school or nursery where they can get a place.
They don't have "backup" (in our case one set of grandparents are dead, the others live miles away, and I can't ask any friend or colleague to come immediately as they - shock horror - also have jobs. If one of my DC was admitted to hospital, maybe. If they are at school and unwell, no.).
We don't live in central London and there are no "nanny services" with "retainers" I imagine in our whole (fairly rural) county.
If you are on a fairly low income how can you afford an au pair?
Many parents share a bedroom in a one bed flat with their baby (or even single parents sharing a bedroom with their one child). Where are they supposed to put an au pair?

You really are living in fantasy land. For many families "a massive pay cut" means "down to zero".

Unusualsuspicionyou would still have had to give a contact number, even if it was your work's switchboard number. People couldn't leave their children without any means of contact.

As for people who say they literally have no means of contact in their working day, what would happen if your child was god forbid taking to A&E whilst under the care of the nursery/ childminder?
Ultimately I dont think child carers are unreasonable, trains get cancelled, issues happen- but the blase attitude "well i cant check my mobile, my husband cant leave work early, and I have literally no friends and no family"- isnt really their issue. Child carers are at their place of work too and they have just as much right to not be stuck with an ill child for hours.

I love these comments. Where do you expect people to find extra 'backup' people from? Not everyone has support networks. Some of us are doing this parenting thing alone and its hard enough as it is, without people trying to make us feel extra guilty about it.

I am a lone parent. I don't have family nearby (well, not family that are well enough to help with childcare). I have friends and neighbours who I know and trust well enough to be on standby in the event of my son being unwell and me not being available.
I understand that it is not always easy to build friendships, but I think if a parent thinks they may be unable to collect their child then they need to make an effort to build their support network.

There are lots of jobs where you have to check your phone in for security and are uncontactable eg nuclear government facilities, surgery/theatre, prison.

That’s why we ask parents to have another emergency contact. If both parents are completely uncontactable during the school day you need to have someone else who can take a call for you. It’s not good enough to say no-one can take an emergency call for your child. What if they had a terrible accident and died? What would you expect the school to do in that situation?

But saying her husband can't leave until the end of his day does sound like yet another husband who chooses to have children but his job is too big and important to ever be able to leave and do his fair share of childcare emergencies

Does it make you feel better about your life and parenting choices to spout things like this about others you don’t know? Some of us care very much about our children and whether they are sick, but shock horror also have jobs which are life or death or otherwise EXTREMELY (as in life long impact) high stakes for other people. To borrow the example of a PP, should I leave that type of scenario to rush to school for a bruised finger? A child who has vomited once? I imagine that you would be the first to be outraged if I did and it was you or your loved one who required my services that day.

And- you’ll never believe this- I’m a mother, not even a feckless father! 🙄🙄

I imagine that the dads you describe, like me, simply have to choose work for the greater good, unless it’s actually, you know, an emergency.

I’d expect something more comfortable than a chair outside the head teachers office for a sick child

I some smaller schools that's all there is. A child has to be supervised or within easy reach of an adult. Schools can't create rooms that don't exist or staff to be there "just in case".

Which is why parents have to have emergency care in place.

Before mobile phones parents were expected to provide emergency landline numbers.We have one parent who constantly sent an ill child to school and refused to collect because she'd get the sack.

Eventually after she'd been sent twice with chicken pox the head had enough and contacted social services who picked her up and got in touch with the mother.

Ultimately it's the parents' responsibility to have something in place and not expect schools to pick up their slack.

presumably your childminder knows where you work? But your DH is unreasonable not to leave immediately
Gp, surgeon in theatre with a list. Lawyer who is in court. Police officer on duty. Teacher. Bus driver who is miles away and needs to wait for another driver to come and take the bus.
There are plenty of people who wouldn't be able to just drop everything and go.

I work in a nursery. We insist that all families have an emergency contact that can pick up if the parent's aren't able to within a reasonable amount of time. Our reason for that is that the longer a sick child is with us, the more likely it is that other children and staff will catch it.

We had a case last year, where the parent's took over two hours to get to us. Seven of the eleven members of staff in that day went down with it, along with a huge number of children, meaning we had to close and carry out deep cleans etc, losing a large amount of revenue, which was extremely difficult when, like most nurseries, we operate on a shoestring. Most parent's also don't realise that we nursery practitioners are on minimum wage, with no sick pay, meaning that many who were off struggled with their bills.

For the sake of that one parent not picking up in a timely manner, tens of other parents had to take time off work, many of us practitioners had our own children catch it from us, requiring more time off work and so it goes on. This is how bugs spread so rapidly.

Please arrange for someone nearby to pick up if you can't get there quickly.

drspouse
if you decide to have children, surely you wait until you can afford them? Like the rest of us did?

Since when do schools let you get away without emergency contacts?

We are talking about emergency back-up, not someone to do the school run daily. If you have 2 parents with such low income, surely paying childcare and back-up is not worth it anyway, one of the parent might as well work part-time instead, and that solves all the problem....

No need to make up excuses you know.

I used to be a teacher, n oway I could just stand up and leave the classroom full of 30 kids and not having anything set up for the rest of the day. We usually needed permission to leave the site from the headteacher, and they were not always available on the spot to approve leaving. So yeah, I get that's not always doable, not everyone has a job when they can just teleport and pick up a sick kid.

Gp, surgeon in theatre with a list. Lawyer who is in court. Police officer on duty. Teacher. Bus driver who is miles away and needs to wait for another driver to come and take the bus.
There are plenty of people who wouldn't be able to just drop everything and go.

which is why they have an emergency contact who can.

if you decide to have children, surely you wait until you can afford them? Like the rest of us did?
So nobody has an unplanned child. Despite 50% of pregnancies being unplanned.
And nobody should be allowed to have children unless they can employ an au pair and have a spare room for them?
And everyone who ends up homeless, or in a low paid job, should have realised this was going to happen before they had children and not had children just in case they had to move into a one bedroom flat when their abusive ex threw them out?
And nobody who lives in a small village in the back end of beyond should have children either, obvs.
Gosh you really do live in a lovely world, don't you.

We have emergency contacts. For EMERGENCIES. That means ambulance. Not sick bowl outside the HT office.

Even if it means paying a retainer to one of the nanny services and be able to call one for help on short notice. Some of these organisations are willing to work even if the child is sick.
Have an au-pair who can be "on call"

These DO NOT EXIST where I live. Even the babysitting agencies only have people who lived in the next town to mine, who would take just as long as me to get there, after I'd called them, made the booking and so on.

What if they had a terrible accident and died? What would you expect the school to do in that situation?

I don't see how having a neighbour I rarely talk to as an emergency contact is going to help in that situation.

I do actually have my DP (doesn't live with me, isn't DC's stepdad) as an emergency contact but he works freelance, is likely to be just as far away from school as I am and has no parental responsibility so wouldn't be very much help in the case of them needing medical care beyond a damp flannel to the forehead or a spoonful of Calpol. I can't magic up people living closer to school - my parents live two hours away and both work full-time anyway! All the school parents I know work too (as I use wraparound care so only meet working parents).

No-one who cares enough about their child and parenting to post on Mumsnet would just leave their ill child in childcare because they can't be bothered to collect them.

Everyone has their own lives to juggle and difficult decisions to make. I say this as someone who has worked in a pre-school and sat cuddling a vomiting child for a couple of hours while waiting.

You are doing your best, don't spend too long worrying about things you can't change, you will drive yourself mad.

They don't have "backup" (in our case one set of grandparents are dead, the others live miles away, and I can't ask any friend or colleague to come immediately as they - shock horror - also have jobs. If one of my DC was admitted to hospital, maybe. If they are at school and unwell, no.).

In this situation then it would be fair to make this known to your childcare provider or school so they can then decide whether to take your child on or somehow put things in place (do schools even do that ?). I mean if you enrolled your child in school and said "no, there is no one to collect my child if they are unwell" what would they do?

*No-one who cares enough about their child and parenting to post on Mumsnet would just leave their ill child in childcare because they can't be bothered to collect them.

Everyone has their own lives to juggle and difficult decisions to make. I say this as someone who has worked in a pre-school and sat cuddling a vomiting child for a couple of hours while waiting.

You are doing your best, don't spend too long worrying about things you can't change, you will drive yourself mad.*

Luckily this is the attitude the schools and nurseries I've used have actually had. That they realise it's difficult and that I'll get there as soon as reasonably possible. Not the rage that some posters have shown here.

@TheOrigBrave

I do know my neighbors but they all work full time as well. My friends all work also.

@EmmaFromEngland you really don't have a clue. I'm a lone parent. No support. Its not an excuse, its my reality.

Even if it means paying a retainer to one of the nanny services and be able to call one for help on short notice.

LOL! I want to live your world where having back-up staff on retainer is a thing.

I’d expect something more comfortable than a chair outside the head teachers office for a sick child

my kids schools are not small at all, and we are South East London so not remote either. The "chair" is all the facilities for sick or injured children waiting to be collected.

What else do you think there are?

I don't think a school could decide not to admit a child just because their parents worked too far away! That's ridiculous.

Same with a CM or a nursery - they always ask for an emergency contact but none of them have ever said "they or you must be available within X time or we can't give them a place".

This was kind of the issue with DS former school. They expected us to come and pick him up if they couldn't cope. We worked out this was illegal but also they seemed to be placing conditions on our employment - which is none of their business.

I want to live your world where having back-up staff on retainer is a thing.

If there are the same thing as some of the nanny agencies here, you pay a monthly membership fee, not a full salary
I had a look, because it works for priority evening babysitting too.

Mia1415

There are no stay at home parents at your child's school?

You have a great childminder then, who is happy to mind a sick child. Count yourself lucky.

Just I'm guessing you live in London or the SE.