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.

You can be in the minority and be right. As you should know with your regular brexit references. You have privilege oozing out of every post you write

Ok. I have nothing to prove.

Also unfortunate that these managers can do this to people. But they can and they do.

There has never been a rule (under the Eu or not) that this won't happen. Sorry op, your lack of empathy is so annoying to read. Think about those who are scared to stand their ground and those who have no support. There is a reason that some children are sent in regardless, it's not always because the sahp cant be arsed!!

@ecnatsid I don't understand how your DH, or any of the others on this thread who have said similar, could have received a warning?
Emergency dependents leave is legally protected. If the nursery sends your child home, you can't just leave them in the streets?!
www.gov.uk/time-off-for-dependants

I do think it's a bit of a rite of passage to go through all these childhood illnesses as they do end up getting them anyway, so I think it's kind of expected that when your child is in childcare at some point they will get HFM, probably a vomiting bug or two, chicken pox and a couple of other childhood things (slapped cheek is another common one), simply because these things are a) very contagious and b) often contagious before they show or symptoms start mildly like a cold, and if we kept kids off for colds then nurseries would be empty from October to April.

So YANBU that children who are demonstrably unwell and unhappy shouldn't be in nursery, but a lot of these bugs are from kids who weren't unwell at the time they were sent in, weren't showing symptoms, were in the incubation period, were carrying stuff from siblings at home, etc. I can't imagine nurseries being happy to accept very visibly unwell children - ours is happy to have kids with coughs and colds but if they have a fever or start to vomit or anything like that then they get sent home.

It seems like such a black and white issue doesn’t it. Don’t send a sick child to childcare. However, many people are just about keeping their heads above water and risk losing their job or have to go without pay if they take time off at short notice like this. The choice isn’t so easy in those circumstances. I don’t think anyone who has never been poor ever really understands how tough it is to be faced with those decisions. Small kids are sick so often parents get desperate. If your sending your kid to childcare so you can make some work meeting then you are definitely BU.

I got a couple calls over the years to collect from childcare or school and honestly I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t get paid sick leave so had to keep as many annual leave days set aside as possible to cater for my DC sick days as I was barely making ends meet.
Many viruses are contagious before showing symptoms ( chickenpox is a perfect example). Once the first kids starts showing symptoms a few more already caught it. So even if all the parents were perfect the kids would still be sick a good bit.

I work in a nursery and totally understand the pressure of work that parents have. However, when you send a child in poorly, the child suffers, they have to be sent home, they pass it on and it obviously affects staffing ratios because the sick child needs one to one. During the pandemic, a nursery worker not far from us died because a child came in to the nursery with covid and sadly she caught it so I do have quite strong feelings about this. Employers need to be more understanding towards parents.

Woooooaaah! that is unbelievably annoying. Knowing your child has COVID and sending them in is terrible. That means you have passed COVID to loads of kids who will take it home and their families will get it to. Thanks a bunch! I really get fed up with selfish people like you TescoCustomerService.

Sometimes we don't know our kid is sick, or we think they just have a cold. They will pass things on without us knowing. That's just life. It's part and parcel of school and nursery. BUT, knowing your kid has a more serious bug like COVID, flu, or chicken pox and knowingly sending them in knowing others will catch it, is v bad form IMO. My son's swim friend does this. His mum sends him in with sickness bugs, flu and COVID. The whole swim squad catch his illnesses (which sometimes means they miss important events etc) and it really REALLY pisses me off.

They def can be rotten though these childhood things! I caught HFM from DD who was only mildly affected, but I'd never had it as a kid so obviously had no antibodies and I was so unwell with it, genuinely one of the worst things I've ever had. And at Christmas too!

Same here. Lone parent to two since they were babies and I've always worked full time.

I think it's vile that people who know they have infectious illnesses go/ send their dependants into childcare/ work/ on public transport/ any other crowded place. Everyone would be unwell far less if selfish people stopped doing this, including them, so even if "they only care about their own family" they are making it worse for themselves as well. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I don’t have to explain myself but I will anyway. As it happens, the nursery my daughter goes to is attached to a private school that doesn’t even offer more than 15 funded hours a week.

Which means that the majority of parents dumping ill kids are likely to be high earners. Otherwise they’d be offering 30 hours a week for eligible children.

The nursery has repeatedly sent me messages saying thank you for not sending her in and being sensible. Which is indicative of the fact that a lot of parents are dumping ill children!. Which has resulted in a staff shortage.

You are trying to argue that you are entitled to break the rules just because it’s more convenient for you. Your approach just causes more hassle for everyone. And you’ll have to pick up your child anyway so what’s the point?

If a school calls me to get my daughter I could be upto 1 and a half hours away. Because I work in Central London and the trains to my location come once every 30 minutes. Not everyone works 5 minutes from their child's school. Parents can take a long time for a number of reasons.

The nursery has repeatedly sent me messages saying thank you for not sending her in and being sensible

Awh I bet you feel chuffed hearing that. 🙄
I don’t have to explain myself but I will anyway. As it happens, the nursery my daughter goes to is attached to a private school that doesn’t even offer more than 15 funded hours a week.

So it is a preschool not a private nursery?

Which means that the majority of parents dumping ill kids are likely to be high earners. Otherwise they’d be offering 30 hours a week for eligible children.

This doesn't make sense.

Why would high earners working FT use a nursery that only opened 3 hours per day.

I think this is BS.

If open FT how would you know they only offer 15 hours? Are you that nosey you've asked?
How do you know parents are receiving 15 hours? Do you have access to their personal life, financial details?

Just hire a Nanny.

WTAF? People are insane.

You'd have think just having gone through a (relatively mild) pandemic would have taught even the obtuse about basic infection control. But clearly not. 😡

I have had a similar argument with school secretaries when called to collect DD who's started to spike a fever during the school day - I worked in social care and I couldn't leave the home understaffed - I had to wait for relief to arrive before I could leave. It depended how long it took my manager to arrive and had I left before cover arrived I could have actually been prosecuted for wilful neglect of the residents I was looking after, never mind lost my job.
But as no one gives a shit about the people in these types of jobs, nothing will change and they'll continue to be put in impossible situations and slagged off whatever they do.

Great. Then you make half your class sick as well. FML how are people this stupid?

Exactly. And this means it comes right back at them (and all of the decent people are who don't do this).

Is it so hard for these people to understand that their own children would be unwell far less frequently and therefore they'd need fewer days off if they all stopped doing this and spreading stuff around?

Sure, in some cases you don't know they have something infectious in time because symptoms come later. But if you do and you send them in anyway you are selfish and stupid, even if you only care about yourself. It's absurdly obvious that it would be better for everyone - including you! - if all of you who do this stopped doing this. So there is no excuse.

Yes keep them off, so many children come in to our nursery sick they are upset most off the day or just have no energy todo anything, the illness then get spreads around like wildfire and before you know it you have a room full of ill children and staff!!

You can't win, if they don't attend due to illness you get a warning about attendance percentage. If you have to pick them up they get really annoyed that you weren't sitting by the phone waiting for them to call.

In your situation it's even worse, and if they themselves were placed in that situation the teachers would have a hard time just walking out to get their children because they cant just leave a class unattended. They would need to wait for another member of staff to attend.
They should have some empathy

A lot of people would lose a days pay or are self employed so they need to go to work so the child will be going to nursery

If my child had a high temp or was being sick obviously she wouldn't go to nursery but if she's got a runny nose she'll be going in

I work in a nursery and have one of my children in the same setting and two older ones.
If I don't go in because one of my children are ill it messes up the ratio of adults to children and then it can mean some parents end up with no childcare.
The majority of the time my son is ill because he's caught an illness from other children at nursery so it's a vicious circle. Absolutely children should be at home and me and my husband juggle as much as possible to make sure that happens but I appreciate some parents simply don't have any option.
IME employers are more understanding if nursery phone and say parents need to pick their child up than if a parent calls in the morning to say they won't be in as their child isn't well.

Plus I've never known a school/nursery close for a bug.

It's happened several times at ours.

It's not fair to send a miserably sick child into nursery but sometimes you don't know if them having a slightly snotty nose will develop into them being miserable or if it is just a run of the mill cold that they'll have on and off for the winter. If my DS has D&V or is clearly unwell I don't send him in and when he had the chicken pox and hand foot and mouth I kept him home as soon as I noticed a spot/rash on him. However, he probably gave it to his friends the 3\4 days in the lead up to the spots/rash appearing and there was no way of me knowing about that. Likewise, he clearly got it from another child whose symptoms showed up after the damage was done.

Your child is going to get sick at nursery and it's pointless to blame "selfish parents" because nobody in the world stays away from all others when they're feeling slightly unwell so these things are always going to go around.