To hunt down these bastards who exposed my son to chicken pox

[littleredbumblebee]

User name changed as outing

went on a caravan holiday last week for 5 nights and my son who is 11 played with some kids from other families and had a great time- all good

On the last night one of the smaller boys was running around with no shirt on and he has spots, one of the other families asked and his mum said oh he has chicken pox but we though getting away would do him good.

I told her my son had never had chicken pox and said I bloody hoped my son was not going to come down with them. One of the other parents also said they should not have brought the kid. Basically it ended up with them going inside the caravan in a huff. The next day we all left

So today the day before my son is use to start at high school he woke up covered in spots and now has chicken pox and won’t be in for his first week at high school. Tonight he is now crying saying he won’t name any friends now and he won’t know his way around and no amount of comforting will calm him down. Very few kids for his school are going to this high school and he is so upset he will have missed out on making friends.

We have been in touch with his form tutor who has been great and has said they will support him and catch him up but I could bloody scream. How can some people be so bloody selfish.

I’m a teacher who is missing the first day back due to norovirus. Someone sent their child to nursery with it so my son got and now me. So selfish.

My DM sent me to all the chicken pox parties going with no success too

Agree!

We’ve had some terrible infected chicken pox cases on our wards over the years. Also even a couple that it’s caused rare brain infections too, It can be truly hideous for some people.

As your child reacted to the vaccine, he is actually very lucky to have caught CP as a child. He will now have better immunity through out adulthood.

He can still contract Shingles as an older adult, usually when he is stressed or vulnerable, Your son might tolerate the vaccine for Shingles when he is in middle age. It's a new one called Shindrix.

Yeah I've never had chicken pox either and haven't really thought about it because I'd not heard of anyone having chicken pox for years and years. I was looking at vaccines for a country I'm considering visiting and it did list chicken pox vaccine as a recommended one for people that missed the childhood one. I'd never considered I'd need vaccines to visit the UK though!

You pay for a vaccine. One year when my children were small I decided to forfeit the family holiday to give them the mmr and chicken pox vaccine before school started.

Wise Brown Owl. .. yes, it was a thing, but my kids were pretty miserable with it.

Luckily DD was born in a country that vaccinates for chickenpox, I don’t understand why we don’t just do it in the UK, it’s horrible, I had chicken pox as a kid and still have scars. My family in the Uk just pay to have their kids vaccinated tbh (it’s worth the money to do it) . If you don’t vaccinate theres clearly a risk of picking it up.

But it is awful to expose your kids on purpose to other people when they have chickenpox, it’s an awful experience. I hope your son feels better soon OP.

OP the world is full of people like this. Hope your DS is feeling better soon. It’s an anxious time for them now without all of this going on!

I had no idea a vaccine was available in the UK!! None of my kids (older teens) have had chicken pox, despite being exposed many times.

i hope he is ok with it

Incubation period for chicken pox is 14-21 days.

If it was last week your son was with these people he probably didn’t catch it from them.

I think it's really poor behaviour to take a child on holiday with chicken pox and totally understand why you're upset OP. What a total pain in the neck.

It’s not cost effective. Most children are fine and need no treatment so it the cost isn’t beneficial. I am glad they are rolling out RSV vaccines to pregnant women to protect babies ! Now RSV causes so much pressure on the peads wards every year.

On a side note - to all those for vaccines and paying I recommend paying to see if your children have immunity against measles etc we recently had daughters done due to a local outbreak she had all her MMR and she was weirdly immune to mumps but not measles. We rescheduled her in for a another one and re tested and now she is.

YABU - it’s only chicken pox! People used to have chicken pox parties to get it out of the way! No vaccine given as standard here in the UK as far as I know, there certainly wasn’t when my children were young.

£150 per child is not cheap. Might not be affordable for all especially if you have more than one child!

They shouldn't have brought their child away knowing they had chicken pox. But realistically it is contagious before the spots appear so could have happened any time.

But I agree I do not understand why some people don't follow the isolation guidelines.

Yep, it’s a pretty rubbish thing to do…intentionally expose your chickenpox child to other children. However, your reaction is pretty strong.

Your child is feeling pretty rubbish at the moment about missing his first week of school, and he’s going to need you to be calm and reassuring. This will be difficult for you to do if you want to ‘hunt down the bastards’.

Although it’s 90% likely that ‘shirtless boy’ gave your son chickenpox, it’s not completely definite. So instead of getting cross about something that more than likely happened, start looking for the positives. Thank goodness he’s got it before he’s an adult. At least it’s not his GCSEs.

Although massively inconvenient, this is one of those things that you need to teach your son to laugh about.

The problem with chicken pox and why it is so effective at spreading is you are most contagious before the spots appear.

I remember when my kids got it. Got ds1 age 3 dressed in the morning and nothing on him. Went to a soft play and he ran around like a loon all fine. Got him undressed that eve and there were a couple of spots. Next day he was covered. Dread to think how many people he infected that week but we didn't know he was ill. My youngest who was 6 months old got it from him and that was us done.

At a guess when they went on holiday they didn't know and the spots appeared while they were there. Really he should have then stayed in his room but by then the damage was likely already done

Oh how to scream ' I'm very uninformed'.
You can get chicken pox of you've had the vax, bright spark.

Hopefully, your son having got at least half of the chicken pox vaccination before his bad reaction will get a very mild dose. I can understand how anxious he must be to crack on with high school and get a friendship group.

@littleredbumblebee
In case you are still reading this, my DS missed the first week of secondary school as he came down with covid in 2021.

He is about to go into year 10 and really really happy.

But at the time I felt wretched for him, he is ASD and struggled with friends anyway. The teaching staff made a huge lovely fuss of him when he arrived and the only problem was that he couldn't find his way to art once, but an older child showed him.

I hope your DC is OK and not too poorly. (FWIW I didn't know there even was a chicken pox vaccine!!)

The older they are the worse it is. He is latte to have it at 11. Imagine him having it at 16 Much worse.

Oh and yes to hunt them down makes you sound unhinged tbh

Oh, @littleredbumblebee— that’s crap.

Besides having chicken pox, is your boy okay? I mean, is it serious?
We all three got it at the same time decades ago, but my older sister got it the worst. In her ears, up her nose, in her mouth & throat, all over her face — even the bottoms of her feet. I was little, but I remember she had to walk on her heels. She also got them around her eyes.
I sincerely hope your son breezes through this with a minimum amount of discomfort.
And I hope he makes loads of friends once he’s back at school.
Sending love and good thoughts.