Kids constantly coming down with sick bugs

[Nightsatthelitten]

How often are your children sick? Mine are both primary school age and genuinely barely a month passes where one or both of them haven’t either been sick or got a cold, it is starting to drive me a bit nuts. Is this normal for primary school age children? Thanks x

How old are they? Mine got sick quite a bit in reception but the eldest is in y6 now and hasn’t missed any school this academic year so far

Mine are primary and secondary now. I’d say not that often. I mean they might have a sniffle here and there, but rarely something that would keep them off school. I think youngest has missed 1 day this year and older one maybe 4 days (half of those because the school sent her home, they are very quick to call you to collect them 🙄 but also very quick to question you if you ever call them out in the morning). I’d say this is similar year on year, we only miss a couple days.

Did yours go to nursery? That seems to be the biggest difference. Mine got all the illnesses out of the way between 9 months and 3. But friends who didn’t go to nursery are off sick a lot. I think they all have to go through it, but some of it go through it younger.

Mine are 6 and 8 (so year 1 and year 4).
weirdly they never seemed to get bugs at nursery (maybe because it was post Covid so hand hygiene was more strictly practiced in nursery at the time?) but particularly since my youngest has started school, the sick bugs are relentless. I’m actually depressed by how often I’m woken up by someone crying and then throwing up all over the place and knowing I will have days of it again

My younger daughter is a great believer in gut health and has given her two children, ten and seven, probiotics since babyhood. They have never missed a day of school. My older daughter dismissed this as twaddle but when her two similarly aged kids kept coming down with all sorts of illnesses, from nursery on, she started giving hers probiotics ( initially secretly and then a bit defensively) and they've never looked back. I have no axe to grind either way, just offering anecdotal evidence. I myself had never heard of probiotics when mine were little and getting everything under the sun - they seemed to specialise in strep throat and ear infections. Based on what I've now observed, I would definitely have given it a go.

My eldest hardly ever.
My youngest, more frequently - plus she seems to throw up more easily in general even without an actual sickness bug (car sickness, she vomits with a cold, anytime she has a fever, she vomited with chickenpox, with an ear infection)

Mine are Year 2 and nursery age. We have maybe one sickness bug a year (in fact we've all just got over one), but aside from that they are rarely ill enough to miss school/nursery. Every other month does seem a little excessive.

Year 2 and 1 in childminders.

Oldest child has had maybe 3 sick bugs in her life. We've not had one for a year (that bug took out two thirds of her class!). We get lots of colds over winter but nothing serious enough to keep off school, just sniffles.

Littlest has not had a sick bug yet (plenty of colds though).

I think it sounds often for that age. When the kids were under 2 they were sick almost monthly in the winter months with cold type symptoms ( they were in nursery) but past 3 they’re rarely sick. We have not had sickness bugs very often at all.
I agree with a pp that probiotics helps and we are very on it with washing their hands very frequently too, as well as reminding them not to put their hands in their mouths..

We are constantly reminding them to wash their hands well, my 8yr old carries hand sanitiser with her in her school bag, their school uniforms are washed daily (because there’s always lunch or mud or something spilt on them somehow, but just making the point they have fresh uniform on every day so it’s not like they have school germs lingering on their clothes), bedding always washed weekly, what’s going on - why are they always getting sick bugs when they never used to????

Do they have packed lunches? Is the school kitchen clean?!

My son has packed lunches and my daughter has school dinners, as far as I know the school kitchen is ok, I haven’t heard anything about it not being clean anyway 😂

One of my dses went through a phase of being ill (running a temperature and being lethargic), recovering, and then going through the same thing, @Nightsatthelitten - it seemed like a never-ending cycle of illness.

In the end, I wondered if he wasn’t recovering properly, and that made him more prone to picking up the next infection, so I started giving him a vitamin and mineral supplement, and a tonic for children - I hoped that, if I built him up, he might be better able to fight off the next bug, and it seemed to do the trick.

They do have a multivitamin, but when you say a tonic, what is that? x

My 6 year old has never had a proper sick bug.
She had a lot of nasty stuff in nursery but never sickness.
I thought it would all start again at school but she was barely ill at all through reception and year 1.

I think some kids are just sicky, some aren't. I don't feed her probiotics or anything. She's very good at keeping her hands clean though.

I can’t remember which one I used, @Nightsatthelitten, but something like Sambucol.

My son has never been one to get sick often, even as a baby/toddler. He's 11 now.

It can be really hard to pin down why some children seem to be more susceptible to bugs than others. When my son was a baby/toddler, I put it down to breastfeeding, but that was probably naive of me.

But now I've said that, he's going to come home this afternoon with norovirus or something, isn't he?? 😂

I breastfed both of them for 2 and a half years each 😂FFS all the good that did 😂

vitamin D intake?
hand hygiene?

I think you'd have to STILL be breastfeeding now in order to maybe lessen the impact of bugs, but that's maybe not the way forward 😂

I’ve give mine probiotics since birth and they’ve got everything under the sun. Although not much vomiting as yet!

Will still keep giving them the probiotics tbf.

out of curiosity, you say they haven’t missed any school but does that mean you send them in when they have a cold or that they don’t get sick anymore?

It's improving now in y4. But they need to learn to wash hands, blow noses properly, not cough on each other etc.

My youngest is 12 and constantly sick. He’s on his third really bad cough/ cold since the end of January. Doctor says it’s viral and nothing he can do. Drink water and rest.

That definitely seems excessive, do you know are other kids at the school ill as much. My daughter is in Yr1, never had a sickness bug before, had colds but not enough to need days off school. Oldest is in yr7, can't remember the last time he was ill, probably covid times.

2 days off a school year is bad for us for illness. Mine are rarely ill but I think it must be partly down in some way to genetics as both myself and dh hardly ever get ill. One of our kids is in secondary and has only ever had a sick bug once, youngest in primary has never been sick (other than car sickness) since preschool. Ive never had flu or norovirus and work in healthcare.

I have a friend who catches everything going and I think her kids are the same. She is often very run down generally though. The only things we do to prevent illness are wash hands when we come home from school and always have windows open at home (as I like fresh air). Also dont have an overly hot house either (set to 18). Hot houses with no fresh air feel like breeding grounds for germs to me. Generally very clean so surfaces/bathrooms cleaned all the time etc.

Other than that, I think immune system/general health has alot to do with it so i’d just suggest vitamins, sunlight, exercise (get outdoors as much as possible) and drum it into your kids to their wash hands.