AIBU to keep DD off school to avoid virus?

[Thirteencats]

There's a very nasty and seemingly contagious vomiting bug going round DD's school. 6 kids were sent home from just one year group today. DD says there were 20 kids missing from her after school activity today - all juniors.

One kid in DD's class had to go to hospital earlier in the week when they couldn't get his temperature down. Other mums in our school year chat group are saying they've never seen their children this poorly before.

I'm wondering about keeping DD home for rest of the week to avoid her getting ill. Especially as its half term next week and we have commitments this weekend that would let people down if we had to back out suddenly. But those things are minor really, the main thing is that this illness sounds horrible and is spreading very quickly and I'd rather DD avoid it.

AIBU to consider it?

We normally are very strict with attendance and DD had 100% attendance last year. Just trying to weigh up risks and benefits.

She's 9 and DH works from home so childcare wouldn't be an issue

Imagine going to work & sharing norovirus with your colleagues when technology exists that means this is largely unnecessary. Never mind bloody stupid.

We know loads of people in Greater Manchester/ Lancs / Merseyside who have had what we all think is the new variant of covid - cough, cold, and sickness .
Hope she feels better soon and you can all enjoy half term 🤞🏻

We were caught up in a nasty Noro outbreak just before DC1 left primary a few years ago. PHE were involved and the school closed a day early for the summer holidays.

The letter went out on the Wednesday evening but by that point we'd all been at a Year 6 leavers parade earlier in the day (indoors as ironically it was so hot). DC's last few days at secondary were like a ghost town and their leavers disco was cancelled as was a family picnic planned for the kids on their last day.

By this point myself and DC2 and DC3 had succumbed but poor DC1 went in until the bitter end. Was the last time he saw most of his class [except there were only about 25 kids in Y6 over 2 classes as the rest were either ill or desperate to avoid being ill before going away - my DC wanted to go in though!]. I was on group chats for 3 different year groups and it was just message after message about another parent / child / sibling - or all 3 - getting ill.

DC1 never caught it despite being the most exposed.

Aaaaaaaaaaand this is why the whole school is sick. Bravo! 👏🏻

Missed the part about 'too sick to go in' then. Bravo. 👏

The fun what? Completely bizarre comment.

Do the think the virus only appears in their system immediately before they're 'too ill'? What a ridiculous thing to think.

If we all have time off because someone else was poorly then nobody would be working.

@Mademetoxicwe are talking about a primary school aged child, whose cohort have within days been wiped out with norovirus.
It’s no comparison to Brenda in the office having the sniffles is it?
Anybody with common sense would do the same as OP, who indicated she would do reading & learning with her daughter.

Again, if the child was not unwell at the time there is no reason she shouldn't be in school. To keep her off 'just in case' is ridiculous.

If we did it whilst we were working 'just in case' we wouldn't be paid and nothing would get done.

How could that happen? When schools were closed so were cafes?

Even more ridiculous that she would have been exposed to the virus anyway so keeping her off school 'just in case' would have made no difference.

Please don’t justify yourself! You absolutely did the right thing. Drives me nuts when selfish parents think the rules don’t apply to them. I work in a school and the amount of kids that come in clearly unwell. I actually had a parent drop their kid off late and he said it was ‘because she was sick on her uniform and they had to go home and get changed’

I hope your DD is on the mend soon!

We have similar going round our school. If i had known how bad it was we would have taken the week off. Why risk your children being so poorly?

@Goatsruleyou're getting on my tits now but guess you are only on here trolling anyway so probably trying to get a reaction. Maybe get a life instead

Op hope your dd is better soon x

And viruses wouldn't raze through the workplace, leaving some healthy people to regroup in a few days rather than being laid up for weeks

My last post was that the child would have had the germs anyway so why keep them off when it wouldn't make any difference in the long run as they would have already been exposed to it. 🤷‍♀️

Exposure doesn't equal illness. Even if it did then your argument is even more idiotic - continuing to send her in just allows the contamination to spread to even more people.

Repeatedly sending her in will only result in two things: significantly increasing the chance that she WILL become ill, or guaranteeing it gets spread around to the maximum number of people.

My manager had it, her kids, and a few others at work and we are Lancashire too

Assuming everyone in the class has been exposed to the virus, then keeping her off 'just in case' will not make any difference whatsoever.

You... you can't possibly believe that's true? I thought science was obligatory until at least 16, you must have had at least some education?

I really like your comment about avoiding the anticipatory anxiety… I have emetophobia so I’m on absolute tenterhooks of dread every time a bug goes round school (haven’t kept kids off as accepting it’s part and parcel, and am lucky that so far they’ve been pretty much unscathed) - but what really ramps up my anxiety is the flurry of class WhatsApp messages about it. Like you say some parents almost seem to revel in it. It doesn’t help anyone and just whips up anxiety for the more neurotic among us - I think I’d be a lot less stressed if not bombarded with messages when these things hit.

i envy you going through this stage pre- class WhatsApp groups! I’m going to try to channel your more pragmatic ‘if they get it they get it’ attitude …and maybe mute the groups 🤪

I think I would because if she gets sick it would spread through your household too.

Well this time it did make a difference, as DD had already caught it. Her symptoms were mild Thursday morning. Mild enough that we would normally send her in. But we decided to keep her off and she rapidly got worse and by lunch time she was being sick. So it made a difference because she was at home when the virus really hit her so DH could look after her and she wasn't infecting others at school.

Also I get that parent WhatsApp groups can cause anxiety for some, but I find ours really useful. I'm glad the other mums shared how their kids were doing because it helped us make an informed decision. And we've known these families 6 years now, we do actually care about the children. One of them was in hospital with this virus - of course we wanted to know. They're part of our community.