To think sending your child to nursery, ill is selfish

[Anon778833]

If my toddler is ill, I do not send her into nursery - it’s as simple as that. If I have to not go into work, that’s just how it is.

There has been an outbreak of slapped cheek at my daughter’s nursery which she caught and now I also have caught too. And it’s a really horrible virus. My poor dd hasn’t eaten for nearly a week. And she is STILL spiking temperature.

Nursery sent out a message to say that thanks to people bringing ill children to nursery, they now have staff shortages. And that people must not bring ill kids to nursery.

I thought this was common sense.

I wouldn’t send my child in if they were seriously ill or had a temperature, or a D&V bug etc but no I’m not going to keep my DS off nursery with a simple snotty cold and basically give away £200 a day for someone else’s sake. And I wouldn’t expect them to do it for me.

Life is more important than money, but you can’t live life without money. You can’t support your family without money. And my life and my family is more important to me than anybody else’s, including Glitteratitar and her kid. So no, I wouldn’t put hers before mine, and I wouldn’t expect her to put mine first either. To assume that anybody would is hopelessly naive.

Well whoever made that rule has never seen the way it spreads through a baby room to every child leaving them with running, sticky, painful eyes. We have our own rule at nursery for this reason - it's highly contagious

If I didn't send my kid into nursery when he has a cold or some other kind of sniffle I'd be paying for something that we never use.

NHS guidelines don’t really apply to how schools and nurseries are run. A nursery aged child is still at an age where they need a lot of support from a carer in any event. They also don’t legally have to be there, whereas children do have to be in school from age 5 unless HE, so at that point there is more pressure about attendance. Although my personal experience is that they are most pushy at senior school, which I guess you’d expect.

It’s not about putting other families above your family but if you ignore requests to not bring children to nursery when they should be at home in bed with their parent then you are shooting yourself in the foot and causing a lot of problems for other people in that setting. As others have said, they have to close a room or cancel activities that the children should be doing.

For all the people who think children should never go to nursery if they have an illness, do you always stay at home with every single illness you have? Or do you never go to work or out in public with a cold?

But kids are often contagious without having any symptoms. It's not realistic to expect people to prevent the spread of all Illness among children and it isn't desirable either.

Exactly. And if it applied to staff too then rooms would be closed all the time!

That’s why I said it’s not black and white.

i may not have been clear but I wasn’t arguing for children to be kept at home for every sniffle, because I live in the real world. I was just highlighting the fact that it isn’t an easy decision in most cases and unless it’s a clear contagious illness most parents just do the best with the information they have and knowing their child.

my son has a medical condition which means I have to set the bar much lower for keeping him home than others need to. But I don’t expect others to do the same even though that will Inevitably increase the risk for him. Sadly that’s life for him but unless we live in a bubble exposure to illness is unavoidable.

I'm in a position with my partner where we work from home and also get paid for leave if our children are Ill, so if mine are I'll they would be off. However I appreciate I'm in an extremely lucky and privileged situation and can have empathy towards other working parents who just cannot afford to do this, fundamentally it's a government issue - if somebody is in a position where they either send their child in poorly or take a day off and no be able to afford basic necessities to survive the next month then I'd rather them send the child in poorly even if it's shit and makes people ill. We have all just had covid and I rang my child's school to inform them and they told me that should she be feeling well today then regardless if she was testing positive she could come in 🤷🏻‍♀️ as it happens she was negative anyway but this seems to be the norm now. It's a difficult issue and I don't think it's as black and white as you seem to think it is. Ofcourse in a perfect world parents would take time off and stay at home with their sick children but in reality that's not always possible.

But almost all private days nurseries will have it written in their policy that children must not attend the setting with conjunctivitis unless they have been seen by a doctor and have appropriate medication. Just because the NHS says it’s fine doesn’t mean a private business must accept your child with conjunctivitis.

Not all nurseries are private businesses, I was lucky enough to be able to use LA-run nurseries.

The 'appropriate medication' point is a great example of why nurseries (whilst often excellent at caring for and supporting the development of young children) are actually not best placed to make medical decisions. It's not generally considered best practice to prescribe medication for conjunctivitis. It's most often viral, and usually self-resolving even when it is bacterial.

Which is why I said ‘private day nurseries.’ Which are all private businesses. Regardless of whether you think they’re ‘best placed to make medical decisions’ they are best placed to make their own private business policies - if you are determined to have a nursery that will accept your sick child when you can’t look after them then you need to carefully comb the policies of the nurseries you look around before choosing one, not complain that most nurseries quite rightly don’t want to be looking after your sick baby or child.

Quite right.

It's not my personal priority, I'm not complaining about my nursery's policies, I'm just interrupting a common assumption on this thread that conjunctivitis is an example of an illness requiring isolation from nurseries and schools. I expect my actually unwell child to be at home with me, and when they are otherwise well and happy with a contagious but very mild illness, like a common cold or a runny nose, I expect them to be in nursery. I'm interested in why conjunctivitis is commonly held to be somehow different in this way.

But as you point out, a private day nursery will prioritise its own profit-making above all else (which is the same reason they're more prone to having to close rooms/entirely due to staff sickness - everything is run closer to the margins). I wonder if that profit-making priority was also involved in OP's nursery apparently failing to actually challenge parents bringing sick children in, and instead sowing the seeds of division with their passive-aggressive letters.

I'm getting flashbacks to that month when DD went in for one full day because every time a child coughed more than once they called you to collect and you needed a negative PCR test before they could return. £700+ quid for one day of nursery plus hours spent going to and from test centres.

I certainly don't think most people are gleefully sending in ill children, but it's hard, both me and DH have to work, there's no one to cover either of our jobs, we don't have family to help out with the kids. He earns 3 x what I do so we can't risk his salary so I end up taking more days off to cover things like D&V. We've had the kids vaccinated against CP and we've been lucky with lots of other childhood illnesses so far but they go in with colds & coughs. I've read that government parental leave someone linked up thread and it's so inflexible - if my kid is ill on a Monday I'd have to take the whole week off, they could be as right as rain the next day but I'd still have to take the whole week. It's no wonder kids are being sent in ill. I've been a manager for years and no one has ever asked to use that policy.

I think the majority of parents wouldn’t knowingly send their poorly kids to nursery if they had something other than a cough or cold. My son has had both since being at nursery, it’s never ending… I only kept him off if he had a temp or was unwell in himself. Also once with diarrhoea and then vomiting. With most viruses they start with coughs and colds so you wouldn’t know!!

If I kept my son off every time he had a cold, I wouldn’t have a job .. or a house.

I would like to think parents who can stay at home with their kids would.

We're all in the same boat. One parent sends their kids in ill then us staff and our kids get it. In my work there's 3 staff off with Covid and the toddler room has been closed down. That's 10 + families having to make alternative arrangements.

Last week I had calpol stinking sick in my hair and all down my front, 5 other kids and one member of staff were off with it the next 2 days, and I've spent all weekend on the loo as a result.

We're on minimum wage and we don't get sick pay or even a clap on the doorstep.

It's selfish. I get it, but it's so selfish. We care about them kids, we treat them like our own and it's awful when they're too poorly to be there.

We can argue all day long about who's needs should come first and who is selfish, lacking empathy or anything else that's been said on both sides here, but the fact is nothing will change unless the culture of effectively punishing humans for being well....... Human and getting ill (and missing work/school) stops.
I don't want to drag myself into work feeling ill, I don't want to pass it on to everyone else, I never wanted my child to attend school ill, but because we are punished for being ill, and I don't just mean those with jobs like mine where you don't get paid for sick days, but fines for kids missing school, disciplinary procedures for being ill too many times in the workplace and face losing your job, not just your income, means it will continue to happen because it's the culture that's been developed.

I'd say the nursery are sending an inflammatory message out to their customers because how can they possibly know that this was caused by parents sending in sick children knowingly

I don't agree. Because while there are grey areas where you cannot tell, they aren't talking about that. It's a nursery. They are used to kids being snotty etc.

Their message was clearly aimed at those sending in seriously unwell kids with fevers masked by calpol, people not respecting the 48 hour rule, etc. People on this thread have admitted to doing it! The nursery onow who they are, and so do most of the other parents.

OP's nursery apparently failing to actually challenge parents bringing sick children in, and instead sowing the seeds of division with their passive-aggressive letters.

Wow, you're blaming the nursery for this?! 😧 That is ridiculous. As if they'd want people to send in sick children and infect their staff? How ridiculous.

I imagine it must have happened a lot for them to send out that email.

My friend is a nanny and I was talking to her about this today. Apparently, dumping a sick child at nursery is classed as neglect as far as social services are concerned. She said that nanny’s/ nurseries reserve the right to call SS in such a situation. I doubt many would actually do this but it is worth thinking about.

My son has caught it twice in two different nurseries. GP just said wash it with warm water and cotton wool. Both nurseries accepted him in.
I was really surprised because when my DDs caught it they weren't allowed to go to nursery.
I really understand why parents send in their sick children but I wish they wouldn't. I wish they would realise that when nursery staff get ill and can't work there is a chance rooms will shut and you will have no childcare for possibly over a week. So you will loose far more money than if you just took 48 hours off.
I know the profession is undervalued but I feel not caring if we get sick from caring for your sick child is too much.

I work in a preschool, we get fed up of poorly children being dumped on us. What some people don’t seem to realise is that nursery/preschool staff also can’t afford to just take time off work, we don’t get sick pay. We’ve had to close in the past because we’ve caught things from the preschool children which then passed onto our own families. No staff = no childcare. And you wont gain anything from dosing your child up and sending them in poorly as they will be sent home anyway. Schools, preschools/nurseries etc are not a drop off centre for sick kids. If your kids are unwell keep them home and look after them yourself instead of expecting someone else to do it for you !

The difference is that a small child will cough and sneeze all over you, not keep their distance etc., whereas adults can keep their distance. But they shouldn’t be at work either if they’re really ill.