To think people want to wrap kids up in cotton wool now?!

[Beforeorafterchristmas]

I just saw a video on Instagram where some woman was ranting about “kids being made to come into school ill” and how we should all just be allowed to stay at home when we have the sniffles or whatever.

My kids have a cold every 10 minutes. When are they supposed to go into school? When am I supposed to work if they’re always off?

Honestly, I feel like more and more people want to wrap their kids up in cotton wool and it’s going to mean zero resilience for any of them growing up.

Am I just really old fashioned or something?!

Nope - this is not a good example. If kids are sick they should be home. And I say this as a full time mom, with 2 kids who have just had flu and were off nearly 2 weeks between them. It's a PTA but not an example of wrapping kids in cotton wool, just what needs to be done. Ill kids shouldn't be in school and the mania around attendance has to stop, it should be focus on outcomes. I'm nearly 50 and it's always been like this, suggest you have pink tinted glasses on here.

My work isn’t going to let me take time off every time my children are ill, so what are we supposed to do @MumofCandRA? We always used to just go to school and sit in the medical room if we didn’t feel great! I’d never be able to work at this time of year if the kids were always off sick

I agree with her. I think it’s madness that schools are made to put pressure on parents to bring their children to school when they aren’t well. It’s honestly awful having an unwell child in your care for a whole day. You can’t look after them or make them feel any better really. Parents should not feel guilty about keeping sick children at home.

I’ve been teaching for thirty years and I’ve never seen a medical room.

So schools are now a babysitting service for sick kids? They should “sit in the medical room.”Wow. This is an incredibly ludicrous suggestion. If kids are sick, they need to stay home so that they don’t spread it to everyone else. If you are sick enough to need to sit in a medical room, then you are not well enough to be in school. It’s very different from having a mild cold or cough. Not to mention the fact that most schools don’t have school nurses or medical rooms any more or spare adults to look after kids who shouldn’t be in school. There is no capacity for this even if it was reasonable which is absolutely isn’t.

Wrapping children in cotton wool is dangerous.. its highly flammable.

Its tricky because there are parents who look for an excuse to keep their children home, and others who will send them in with a leg hanging off and instructions not to bleed everywhere. Its getting the balance right.

I think it depends on what you class as a cold. My mum always sent me to school with a cold. She said I didn't have a temperature so that was that, even though I felt rough. Now I notice other people say they have a cold when they have a runny nose. When I come into a warm room from outside and then have to blow my nose my colleagues ask if Ive got a cold - no! And it was the same with DC when they were at nursery.

But, surely, your children wouldn't have a cold every ten minutes if everyone didn't go to school and pass it around. 😬

For a bog standard cold then they should go in, it's only with severe illness that they need to be off. My 3 year old goes to a childminder and if I was to keep him home for every cold, he'd never be there from November to march

Oh and yes, kids don't have resilience nowadays because for some reason parents are loath to allow their child any independence at all

Your kids have a cold every 10 minutes because people send their children to school when they’re ill.

You're very confused, this is just a groundless rant.

In the good old days, kids were more likely to be off school when ill as there was little absence management and less common for both parents to be working and ok to be home alone.

These days kids are encouraged into school more when ill, yet somehow you think they are suddenly less resilient because they are off more, even though they are off less

At least try to base your rants in facts.

Also, how are you measuring resilience?

No one seems to have an answer to what I do about work if my kids are always off though? I’d be fired if I took that amount of time off, it’s honestly ludicrous

I think the point is that parents should be able to make the decision on whether they feel their child is well enough for school or not without the school making threats about attendance.

Because it’s irrelevant - if you want to send your ill child to school then that’s your judgement. That doesn’t mean we should have to be forced to take our kids in when we don’t feel that they’re well enough.

I need to find the video because I’m probably not making myself very clear, but it feels very much like we are just finding excuses to keep our kids off as opposed to showing them that sometimes we have to work through a cold or whatever - that’s just life!

Well this is the basic unfairness of life. Some people don't work, some have more flexible jobs, some have family support.

You presumably have enough resilience to cope?

But it isn't everyone's life, is it?

My work lets me have time off when I'm sick.

They shouldn't be in school if they're ill.

Well I can’t find it now, I just remember feeling like it’s just an impossible expectation for everyone’s employers and all the schools to give up all the rules around attendance because it’s making our kids feel guilty or whatever she said. It’s rubbish.

This is pretty new since Covid and it mostly depends. If you’re genuinely so unwell you would otherwise be in bed then don’t go to work / school but we all have immune systems and unless we’re somehow immuno compromised then as a rule it’s good for us to be exposed to each others germs in order to be able to be able to shake off things like colds and bugs easily rather than go down for a week every time someone sneezes on us.

I do the kind of job which impacts public safety and if I don’t go in, they’re just short of people as there aren’t enough numbers to provide a replacement so pretty sure most people here would expect me to just man up and get on with it if I had a cold, which I do. I’m raising my teenage sons with the same resilience which will only benefit them in the workplace.

Perhaps the solution is better protections for workers with children (I think you are allowed several weeks of unpaid leave for care duties, not sure of the details). But it's not forcing sick children into school to get worse, take longer to recover and spread illness further.

Nobody would develop any immunity to cough/cold viruses either.

Totally
When I was a kid I travelled on the tube and train on my own at 13
Was going to parties at 15
The last thing we wanted to do during holidays was spend tome with parents we were out with friends from about 14
Now parents think during a holiday "what do we do to amuse our kids"
LET them go out and explore as develop as people
This is why so many cannot cope with the slightest disappointments or conflict and have become one of the snowflake generations

Thank you, exactly what I mean!