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?!

If you cant get time off, then send your kids in.

If other people can, then maybe they'd rather not.
I would much prefer people didn't send sick kids in, because I don't my kids being sick and then being sick myself.
If your kids are developing immunity from being in school and not wrapped up in cotton wool, then why are they always ill?

If one ax me, they should be down t'pit or workin' t'loom. Not mitherin' about in t'parlour glued t'box.

Sort emergency childcare for these situations? School isn't childcare

I don't think people should go to work/ school if they're properly unwell. But bog standard colds and coughs are a completely normal phenomenon, particularly in the winter.

Before covid and the norm of hybrid working people just went to work and school with colds and just cracked on. I dont remember people falling down dead in the street as a result. Mild viruses boost the immune system and make us more resilient to more serious illnesses. Being prissy about it can actually risk making you iller if you catch something worse.

One winter in my early 20s I had 11 colds, literally one after the other. If I had gone off sick every time I would have been sacked within weeks.

It seems to have been phases. As a child (70s) if we were obviously unwell, colds or otherwise, we stayed home. A note was written explaining why we had been off on our return. If we were taken ill at school we went to medical room and the school nurse looked after us until the end of school day. There were a couple of beds. This was an ordinary state primary in a market town. Not everyone had home phones, we certainly didn't so there wasn't any way of contacting parents whether they were working or SAHM.
When my DC were primary in early 90s, it had gone to school ringing if they so much as sniffed and no expectation of being in if remotely off colour. The downside was once their contemporaries started in the workplace they expected to take sick days for everything down to a headache. Mobiles were starting to be popular so parents contactable.
Now DGC are expected in unless at deaths door to meet government targets but no medical rooms if they are ill and parents expected to drop everything to collect.

Change jobs or career paths. Your children come first. I don’t think kids should be kept off for sniffles, coughs etc but sending your child into school when they have a temperature, infection or rash etc is neglect.

Eh? The job market is known to be completely shit right now. And aren't most teens studying?

At any rate, if you send your kids in sick and you go in sick yourself and it's no problem because of all this fantastic resilience, what were you complaining about earlier? You said it was a problem when your kids and then you all got ill in succession but if you all just go on to school and work anyway, what's the issue?

A bit of a runny nose but otherwise fine and they probably need to be in. But if they are sick/ill they should be at home. I had mumps, measles, rubella, chicken pox andthe usual stomach bugs / colds and there was no issue about being at home. Schools run like businesses these days.

Private schools do @savoycabbage. Our school has a full medical rooms with 2 nurses onsite the entire day.

I can see both sides. Of course if children are actually unwell (not just a runny nose) then they shouldn’t go in to school and spread it around. Teachers don’t want them to do that either!
There are actually NHS guidelines for whether a child is too sick for school:
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/is-my-child-too-ill-for-school/

But my DS for example will get a cough that goes on for weeks in the winter, he’s perfectly fine aside from the cough, so he has to go in!

However there are a lot of children who are regularly off school for ‘illness’ when actually they just don’t want to / can’t / won’t go in. In my school there are some pupils who are off a day week with one illness or another. Stomach ache / headache / feels sick / feels hot etc. These aren’t little kids, these are teenagers, nearly adults (and they don’t have an underlying medical condition).
So either we have a significant number of children with incredibly poor immune systems - or they are avoiding going to school, and as it’s under the guise of ‘illness’ it’s hard for schools to tackle this. I mean, it’s really not normal to be ill one day a week!
It does seem that some teenagers just can’t cope with doing 5 days a week of school / college. I don’t know how they will manage when they get a job.

NHS guidance:
“Coughs and colds
It's fine to send your child to school with slight cough or common cold symptoms, such as a runny nose, sore throat or headache, as long as they're otherwise well and do not have a high temperature.
But if they have a high temperature, keep them off school until the temperature has gone.
Encourage your child to throw away any used tissues and to wash their hands regularly.”

There needs to be a balance. I’m Indian origin. I know parents who are currently trying to get their kids receiving Cancer treatment into school everyday without any consideration to how they’re feeling on the day.

I do get what you’re saying, 17yo got an awful land when he rang into work saying he had a cold and they asked how sick he was. They told him he could just work out the back. In real life in a lot of jobs you need to be crawling on the ground to not go in! If they’ve something like a cold and have energy, normal temp, eating, drinking and going to the bathroom normally I’d think they’d be fine to go in

I get so sick of ‘school isn’t childcare’ being trotted out as some sort of ‘gotcha’. For the vast majority of childed households, both parents need to work, and a routine is planned around normal school hours. When a child is sick enough not to be in school, the wheels come off. It’s not surprising, though a great shame, that this means children who really need to be at home end up being sent to school. Add in the manic focus on attendance stats and you get germ soup.
It was better when it was possible for one parent to be more available during the primary school years. The current set-up is horrible for everyone.

Wow. That is just cruel.

Not taking time to recover from illness isn't resilience, it's a stupidity most of us are forced into.

When I worked in a school the rule of thumb was if the child was running a temperature and was obviously unwell, the child stayed home. On the other hand if the child was just a bit under the weather with say a sniffle or runny nose the child goes to school and the staff will monitor and would phone home if child became more unwell. It worked well in my school.

Meh, coughs/sore throats/runny noses are miserable. I don’t want them myself, so I don’t particularly want my child in school picking up the germs that cause them from other children who’ve been sent in to school when they’re obviously unwell.

Admittedly, I only work PT and fully remote in a very flexible role, which is a privileged position to be in when it comes to managing school absences, but if my own child is unwell then I do the considerate thing and keep them home.

There's a number of clashing pressures going on.

Unrealistic government targets turning schools into the middle man. Some bad luck with an illness like flu or chronic illness can hammer the data, especially in the autumn term. Common illnesses are weighted towards the first half of the school year.

Lack of support for SENs. Lack of appropriate school places, lengthy waiting lists, restricted curriculum options and tight budgets. This is a significant driver of persistant absenteeism. A relatively small proportion of persistant absentees has a major impact on whole-school data.

Children can't be "signed off" in the way that adults can. Their access to medication is more restricted than adults (much easier for me to dose up and function than my DCs). Access to primary care for prompt treatment for moderate illness is harder than it once was so illnesses can escalate. (I once couldn't get DC to the GP for a chest infection- litterally had texts saying "we have no appointments, don't ring" and his asthma ended up later escalating to 999 and a week off school)

2020/21 policies did damage home/ school relationships and boundaries on illness. Some people did keep under the weather children off (rather than ill), or preventative absences more than before enabled by increased WFH.

Cost of living has pushed the saving of term time absence vs school holiday peak costs. A week here or there seems pretty trivial compared to 4 + 2 months being kept out of school then repeated 10 day isoloations for a mildly sniffly classmate.

Safeguarding means schools have to be more proactive about monitoring absence.

Illness can be quite a nuanced issue and government policies have turned it into a blanket issue.

I don't appreciate having clearly ill children existing miserably in my classes. Schools are too reluctant to let clearly ill children go home and it's a false economy on spreading illnesses further, but equally it is normal to plough on using over-the-counter remedies for feeling a bit below par.

I remember being off school when I was poorly in the 1980s. I rarely have sick days as an adult. I will allow my children to stay off if they feel unwell, it's a rare event. I don't get the link between sick days and resilience?

Why though? What is the fascination with temperature? I didn’t even have a thermometer in my house with my 2, now 29 and 26, and I also only recall ever having my temperature took at the doctors when I had mumps, 🫣 I have so many parents calling in to work saying their kids have a temperature & they need to take them to the doctors?!?! Normalised process in a business is 3 periods of sickness in a 12 month period before sickness monitoring begins, I’ve had one day in 8 years and that was because I was admitted to hospital on my off days and they were faffing about discharging me, have I been to the docs in that time for things, yes many many times, have they offered me sick notes? Yes many many times but have I hand in heart felt that I’ll that I couldn’t manage to go to work? Nope! My grandad always used to say if you saw a five pound note on the floor outside the house and you physically couldn’t go out to pick it up that is the only time you are ill enough not to go to work & have lived by that since!

My middle school had one. I remember sitting in it waiting for my mum to me pick me up.

D&V or a temperature and I keep mine off. Anything else no.

I think we probably had the same grandad! This is exactly how I feel about it all.

Yes of course my kids go to school with a cough/cold/sore throat. Would obviously be off with D&V or the flu, but otherwise in they go, just as I would go to work with the same.

Clearly if they were lethargic and needing to stay in bed then I’d keep them off but usually they’ll have some ibuprofen and be good to go.