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?!

Having a cold doesn't mean you are ill.

Yes kids are wrapped in cotton wool nowadays. I don't understand why adults do this? All they're doing is creating a rod for their own back. Never mind there will always be sites where people can come and say my kids are rude/entitled blah blah blah... yeah well if you had took them in hand then they might not be like this.

Ban gentle parenting!

I found the video https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSH8v9dDNmu/?igsh=MWxuNjdlcnRvYmp2bA==

I don’t want to sound like a ranty wrong generation old woman, but honestly this just wasn’t even a consideration when I was at school. You went to school regardless unless it was something really bad obviously.

I can't see the issue. She started off talking about flu, well of course nobody should be in work or school if they've got that. Are you taking her "not feeling 100%" completely literally? I don't think she's saying take time off if you feel anything other than totally ready to run a marathon, at the very peak of energy and fitness.

I agree in general but that's a bad example.

Kids should not be sent to school if they are ill.
It's miserable for them and all the others they infect. You end up with half the class off and the teachers getting ill.
You have to take your holidays when they are off sick. I used most of my annual leave on kid's sick days when they were little. This was in the early 2000s, don't know if parents are allowed parenting leave now.

Whoah OP, chill man! Stop watching nonsense on social media, you’ll feel much better! In the real world the vast majority of parents are sensible enough to know if a sniffle is just a sniffle and their kid is okay to go to school, or if their kid is clearly unwell and needs to be tucked up in bed with a good old fashioned dose of TLC!
it can be a hard call to make first thing in the morning when most people, including kids, aren’t feeling their best, particularly on dark mornings, but go on what you see or instinct and do what you feel is in the best interest of your child.
I think this current craze of building ‘resilience’, in my day it was known as ‘character building’, is just a load of bollocks, but that’s just my opinion.
as to what you can do, well, what most of us have to do; take annual leave/ unpaid leave / tell the dad to step up/ look for a more flexible job / become self employed…
it is shite, no one is denying its very stressful raising kids when two parents work with inflexible employers. When most people are thinking about raising a family it’s probably not on any potential parent’ radar, but it should probably be covered in PHSE, damn sight more use the knowing about anal and oral sex but there we go.

As a PP above said, your kids would not get sick if other sick kids were kept home.

I think you can answer your own question, by asking yourself if other parents should keep their sick kids home so they don't infect your kids. getting them sick, so you have to take time off.

Does that make sense ? TBH, I'm not sure myself.

But it's a paradox thing. Because you sending your sick kids to school causes other kids to get sick, and their parents might be cursing you because your kids passed on what they have to theirs.

So the cycle needs to be broken when something is going around.

And if the cycle is not broken, then you will have regular sick kids you need to stay home to look after.

So if everyone kept their kids off when sick initially, in the long run there would be less sick kids, and more lost work days in the long term.

If a child is sick they should be at home. That's not wrapping them in cotton wool it's just good sense.
Sick children going into school can't learn, they take up a lot of teacher time and they pass on whatever it is they have meaning more children and probably teachers have to be off sick. We are in the middle of a flu epidemic which makes it even more important to keep sick children at home.
And I'm sorry it's not a good argument to say how are you supposed to go to work if you have to look after your sick child. .
School isn't a place to care for sick children so their parents can go to work it's there to educate the child.

It’s just not the way I was bought up and I do feel like since Covid there’s this whole group of people who want to keep their kids at home wrapped up. It’s no good for socialising, no good for immune systems etc.

Don't be silly. Truanting was sky high in the 80s, people stayed home if they felt like it.

You are not grounded in facts.

And we saw what happened with Covid. Because it was so infectious, lots of people got it. And the more people got it, the faster it evolved.

Edit to add: The more people got it, the bigger the chance it would infect someone who was at massive danger from it.

Well there is a post-COVID societal shift for sure, it has impacted the whole nation in complicated ways.

But it's nonsense yo pretend kids weren't off sick previously.

Plus the pressure on attendance in schools is genuinely unhealthy and counterproductive.

What wasn't the way you were brought up (and why was the way you were brought up so infallible?)? I can't see any issue in what she's saying. I don't think she's suggesting we all take to our beds as invalids if we have a slightly runny nose. Your OP suggests that if your kids were kept off every time they had something slightly off, they'd hardly go in at all. Is that true? Are your children really low level ill most of the time?

@ThatCyanCat if you have more than one child, they’re generally staggered with their illnesses. So one is off a couple of days, then the other one gets it and they’re off, then I’m off with it. I don’t understand how it’s supposed to be sustainable for a family to be taking so much time off work and school at this time of year

Yes, I understand that, but still... your kids are low level ill all the time?

Perhaps the answer is better protections for workers with families or something like that (actually I think more affordable living is the answer to most modern woes) but it's not sending sick adults or children into work or school to get sicker, take longer to recover and spread the illness around.

It reads to me as though your main concern is your job and income, which obviously is very reasonable, but you feel like you need to use "resilience" and "character building" and "not how I was brought up" as the justification because that seems more acceptable. But I bet that if you were fortunate enough not to have to worry about work, you also wouldn't be worrying about resilience and character and all that. You'd just take the time you needed for yourself and your kids to get better.

And I think that's what she's getting at. She's saying that people are sometimes ill and need some time off, but as a society and culture we don't like that, employers don't like it, it creates an environment where people are scared to be off, and as a result we all get sicker. If we could get a solution to that, we could recover as we need to and I don't think anyone would care about cotton wool and snowflakes and all that.

Schools are a bit mental about attendance now which is probably what the video was alluding to. A lot of parents keep children at home with genuine illnesses (probably caught from school) and find that school phone them up to question it. Happened to me last week, I kept my child off for a fever, informed school and the next day they called me 10am asking where he was. Bearing in mind he'd had 100% attendance since September before that so they should trust me.

That’s why it takes a village and working full time and having kids is pretty much impossible.

I mean…

kids who are vomiting shouldn’t be in school.

neither should kids with diarrhoea because both transmit germs really really fast.

sending a sick kid in with either of those really isn’t on.

then there’s flu and tonsillitis and the rest. Kids do get seriously ill, too ill to be in school. Yes it’s shit, but schools really aren’t babysitting services for ill kids.

i speak as someone who had to leave a job when my twins got chicken pox one after the other and nursery refused to have them.

It's a bit of both isn't it? Yes I think people are overprotective now and kids got a better start to growing up in the 70s and 80s.

However, there is hopefully less emotional neglect these days, as we're more psychologically aware.. although even as I type this I'm not sure friends that are primary school teachers would agree - but I am optimistic..

Having a cold never used to be a big deal I used to buy herbals on the way to school even the teacher would help themselves now everyone claims they have the flu do you have a temperature? No its unlikely to be serious then my current cold has lasted three weeks if I were a school child should I be off school? No because im fine my nose is running like crazy and im coughing but im fine

I do think we are severely lacking in a 'get on with it' attitude

How are we building resilience???

Do you know how much class time can be taken up by having to attend to kids who should not have been sent in to school?

Sending them in with a slight sniffle, I can understand.
Dosing up an obviously unwell child with Calpol and leaving them for teaching staff to look after is just not on.

It's not hard. If you have a cold and feel ill/need to be in bed, stay home. If you have a runny nose and mild cough but feel fine, take some paracetamol and carry on 🤷 With all temperatures, I'd say stay home.

If we stayed home for absolutely everything, no one would build immunity. Equally though, I hate push through culture, and feel it contributes to the spread of more serious respiratory issues where people should really just have stayed home.

TBH I would never call having an ordinary sort of cold ‘sick’. A really stinking horrible cold, yes.

Colds aren't just colds for every child. Mine always gets a temp with a cold so he stays at home.

👏 exactly this! It just feels like we are regressing and it’s no wonder there’s so many teens out of work, because they feel like they don’t have to deal with the real world.