... to feel disappointed with the childminder, or am I being over cautious?

[doitall]

Our childminder looks after a child related to her. Over the weekend this child was very ill with a fever, and was taken to hospital. The child was discharged and is better - but still recovering.

Called this morning to find that this child is at the childminder today. Is it unreasonable to feel a bit cross about this? It puts me in a really difficult position. Being self-employed if my DS is ill, I have to take time out unpaid (and have to work evenings / weekends to catch-up). I have no-one else to look after him. Therefore I don't want to put him in a situation where there is an ill / recovering child.

At the last minute, by complete chance, a friend stepped in to take care of DS today, and I have not sent DS to the childminder. My childminder's view was he could catch anything at any of the places that they visit on a daily basis - which I agree with, but this would be knowingly placing him somewhere where he would catch a bug.

Overly cautious? Unreasonable?

I think your being a little over cautious, but its understandable and especially if your looking at the consequences of you losing work through it.

It has been interesting to read the responses to this thread. My dd attends a nursery and they would absolutely not have accepted the child with the temperature, particularly if there was enough concern to take that child to the hospital. I think on balance I don't believe the CM should have accepted the lo either.
I don't think the point is about trusting the childmilder to make the decision. Ultimately, whether or not to knowingly expose your child to something that could potentially make them unwell is the decision of the parents and no one else.
YANBU, and you should not have been put in this position. No one is disputing that common sense should be used, and a temperature that is on balance likely to be due to teething wouldn't have concerned me. However, the lo you are referring to sounded ill rather than anything else more innocent and in the current climate of a pandemic I think people need to be very cautious.

YABU - you have chosen to put your child into group care, so you have to accept they will be exposed to other children.

I would check out the cm's sickness policy to see what her exclusion periods are.

Thanks, atworknotworking. Interesting to know. Very fair of you to give 3 free sick days too. Wish my CM did the same as my LO is always picking up some illness or other!

Where are all the people that were on the "vomiting after off milk" thread telling the OP that she was being unreasonable taking her sick but almost certainly not contagious child to nursery, and that sick children need their mothers?? Amazing how two similar threads (but from opposite viewpoints) can get such different responses.

Just because a CM offers to take your child while looking after a sick one shouldn't mean she should still get paid. She could be taking the sick child for any number of reasons, and some could be wrong.

What happens if it is the other way around? If your child was ill on w/kend would you expect your CM to take him? And would she?What is the agreement?

If the answer is 'yes' then you are unreasonable.

If the answer is 'no' then i can see your point. And if this is the case perhaps you feel that she does excemptions for other child because he is relative (you have mentioned this twice so perhaps that's the case? I might be wrong)

Ooh ooh oh

I am going to disagree with blondes and shiney (and a few others I think)

The child was discharged from hospital - that means they were admitted to hospital, this child had a virus that caused such a high fever the poor poppet was hospitalised and yet is with the CM today (24ish hours later) ??? Can no-one see why this is not ok? All of the other children with the CM now have the risk of catching a virus that causes Hosiptal Level Fever, this is major. Some children will be affected worse than others, if they are lucky the related child will have been the worse and the others will just have a single rough night, OTOH though, this child may have only had a fairly mild response and some other child and its parents are now set up for days of worry in a hospital somewhere. Simply because of the selfish response of the childs paretns and the OPs CM.

How many of you would spend (for eg) Saturday in hospital whilst they try to bring your young dc temp down to a safe level and then send it to the CM on the monday?

Viruses are not only dangerous when they have physical symptoms such as spots/D&V. I would be stunned to find the CM would have the ops child in the same situation.

In short, OP YANBU (IMO).

I think some people just like telling OPs they ABU. As I said there was a similar thread very recently but about a nursery, OP was the mother who had taken her child in and she got told in no uncertain terms she was bVu!

Stealth, I saw the beginning of that thread but never went back because it was so obvious that the op had done nothing wrong, I had no idea it turned out like that - very strange!

well I think she said she wanted to hit the woman who was having a go at her about it, so that was very unreasonable, but the decisions she made about nursery etc..no I don't think they were.

The child may have a virus... which may passed from person to person via the air, touch etc. However what is to say that the child wasn't carrying that virus for the past couple of weeks? Incubation period of a virus can vary... during that incubation period the virus may can still be contagious. As you don't know what the virus is, you don't know what the incubation period is likely to be, or how contagious or when it is contagious.

The child was discharged from hospital - so I presume the medics were happy that the child did not pose a significant risk.

Is the child ill? Not sure we really have sufficient info to be able to determine that.

KingCanuteIAm - Isn't it possible that the child had the virus on the Friday, prior to hospital admission and thus the risk to the children at the CM's is the same as it was on Friday.

I'm not medically trainned (any doctors in the house?) but my guess is that a virus can be in the human body for a period of time before showing symptoms.

I don't think wanting to hit someone is really that unreasonable either given the stresses of the morning... If she had hit then I guess it would have been different

Nannynick, that is a silly thing to say, children with mild D&V are not allowed to CM/nursery but they are not hospitalised as a "risk". Dc with Chicken Pox - same applies, the fact they are not in hosital does not mean that they are well enough to be in childcare

Of course it is possible he had it beforehand - just like with the examples I used above - however the rules still apply WRT returning to childcare.

There is a virus going round at the moment which is very shortlived but results in horrendously high temps - my nephew had it. Was sent home from school on Wednesday, Thursday had a temp of 41, by Friday was a lot better and right as rain by Saturday. If he'd been a younger child, I daresay he'd have been hospitalised.

As both this and the nursery thread show though, it is patently obvious that the best thing to do if you think your child is well enough to attend nursery/go to the CM is not to tell anyone if they have been ill or suddenly everyone becomes medical experts

Childminders and other childcare settings follow HPA guidance. You can download the guidance from this page.
I cannot locate in the guidance as to how long a child should be kept away in the situation described... so I feel it's to the CM to decide if they want to take the child, or not.

YABU - doesnt sound like this child has the plague - surely your child will be exposed to viruses all over the place!
Totally over cautious IMO!

KingCanuteIAm - thank you so much for your opinions. I have been slammed for responding to some threads which I just couldn't get my head around, but you talk a lot of sense.

The reason I find it a difficult one is that I wouldn't send my child to nursery / cm if they were suspected of being contagious in anyway. Which is why I found the CM's attitude perplexing (and which is why I was questioning my own attitude to it as an AIBU start-up thread). Personally I would not want to put other children at risk, and make other people's lives unpleasant, unnecessarily. From reading some of the threads, I guess that's not an issue to some people.

Spice, as the Op was told (by the CM) that it was ok because children would meet it elsewhere (clearly not what a Doctor would have said) you have to assume there was no medical advice given (either that he was fine to go back or not fine to) or that the parent/CM were not willing to share it. THerefore the Op has to make her own risk assessment given what information she has. I would say drinking rank milk and hospitalisation for fever require different risk assesments. You do not have to be a medical expert to make a decision for your own child, just their parent. I have offered my view on the subject, not made myself a "medical expert"

Ime children recover as quickly as they become ill and yes I would send a child to school or nursery even if they had been in hospital 48 hours previously if I thought they were well enough (and weren't ooozing pus or whatever).

OP - yabu and you need to accept that you cannot isolate your child from the potential for infection no matter what you do. So what if the childminder had refused the child - she herself could still have been incubating the same virus - how would you know?

As has been said doitall the opinions you get here often swing from one end of the spectrum to the other depending on how the op is written. If the child had had chicken pox and been in hospital with the fever you would have been sure that everyone would be backing you up. SImply because he has no physical symptoms you are slamed. The child with the milk thread was in the wrong because the child showed a physical symptom - even though there was nothing actually wrong with the child.

Tis the nature of the beast IMO (you may also notice the name calling if you disagree thing starting up soon...)

Northerlurker - I'm not that daft. I know I cannot isolate my child from illness. My child does not live in some bizarre germ-free 'bubble'.

The issue here is would you really knowingly put your own child near one that is infected with a virus (that is suspected of being contagious) and which had put them in hospital 48 hours earlier? And on the other side, would you be happy to let your child with such a virus be around other kids?

My DS had Scarlet Fever a couple of years ago (passed around a playgroup) yet I did not think it right for him to mix with other kids until he was completely back to health. Is that really neurotic parenting, or concern for others so that they don't go through the hell you've just been through?

Also - illness actually affects the whole family here. I'm self-employed and if I don't work, I don't earn any money - which obviously has an impact (even if it's for a couple of days).

at king for disagreeing with blondes

the way i saw it, hospital sent the child homeas there is nothing you can really do for viral infections - if they were that worreid they would have kept in for observation/drip fluids etc

cp is contagious, and many cm still are happy to have children with it,probably as cp is most contagious BEFORE they pop out in the blisters

in the end, if it says in the contract that as long as not D&S, spots etc,then mindess can come then the cm was quite right to have her mindeee regardless of if the child was a relation or not

scarlet fever is different, it is very contagious - my dc6 had this at easter - was off school for a week (missed last day of term&party )

some virals are contagious and others arent - tech a child cant catch a high temp from another, but obv could catch the virual infection (then again they may not)