To make my children stay in bed all day when they are ill?

[heQet]

Or more specifically, when they claim to be so ill that they can't go to school, groan and moan and flop about but miraculously summon the energy to jump about after 10am?

So I have implemented a new policy - if you are Too Ill to go to school you are Too Ill to get out of bed.

ds1 is the first victim of the new policy and is most put out. Every time I go up to check on him, he gives me big puppy dog eyes. I fear I am in danger of crumbling under the pressure!

go on, sock it to me, I can take it.

Yes, my grandma had rural convalescence too. Possibly to do with the same condition my dd has. Dd otoh was investigated for truanting. Guess which one ended up self-harming.

Dd is now school refusing because after years of being sent conflicting signals by adults (yes, we know you are ill but we're still think you might be malingering) she has now got to the stage where she does not trust either adults or her own body. She genuinely does not know if she is ill or not.

My old GP used to "prescribe" 1-2 days TLC.

I am very sympathetic, Cory! But if they're in bed they're more likely to sleep. They can have books but no tv because it can keep you awake. There's no punishment.. if they're awake I will be there reading to them, I don't know, just sitting, fixing stuff, quiet jobs I have to do. I want them horizontal and if possible asleep. They are ill after all! I really don't think tv is good medicine. Sleep is the best medicine.

Gosh yes I like convalesence too.

With my DSs they could either stay in bed or lie on the sofa but not do anything else. If they were capable of anything else they went straight back to school (unless infectious). They were rarely ill (or permitted to be ill) - no "My tummy hurt, my head hurts etc" days off - apart from the time DS2's tummy really hurt as he had appendicitis.

boredom is good.. they can bore themselves to sleep

Surely it depends on the nature of the illness and the amount of time they are off, upandrunning, whether sleeping all day is the best aid to recovery or not? If it comes with a long convalescence (like pneumonia did for me at 13), then sleeping all day for 3 weeks is not necessarily the best medicine. After you have slept for the first week, you need help to do slowly start doing something else. In hospitals, as mentioned by a previous poster, sick children are not encouraged to sleep all day and that may be for good reasons.

As for "rarely permitted to be ill", lilymaid, - isn't that just another way of saying "we were lucky enough never to have much genuine illness/no immune problems/no chronic condition that led to frequent illnesses"?

I'd have gone mad by now if I had had to spend the past 3 weeks - and now another week after this - in bed convalescing!!!

you'd have bed sores too

i think some people love lying in bed when they're ill. it's sort of attention seeking.

even when i had my c section i was up and about two hours later

Dd hasn't exactly gone mad, but she has got used to sleeping 18 hrs/24- which I think is very unhealthy and needs to be nipped in the bud.

Well yes sure, but if they are off school for a day ill, which is what the thread started off with, then it'll be the first day of illness, and they stay in bed, and then I will keep them a second day in bed too probably. I was just talking about the normal situation of children off school ill. If I was dealing with a chronic illness we'd be at the doctor I guess and would take advice from there.

Bed here, no screens or toys and only reading allowed. Same as when I was a kid, staying home is boring so we all get better much quicker!

Cory I'm sorry to hear about your daughter, how old is she? She sounds very down.

That is true; ouch to bed sores!

At least this coming week off I am allowed to start doing som gentle outings: coffee with friend, lunch out, trip to hairdressers, etc. Just have to avoid vey cod weather, so fingers crossed no snow again. And then maybe, after 4 weeks off, I can think about work again.

am i being really harsh, or am i the only person who doesn't see a cold as an excuse to stay off? fair enough if the cold is semi-fluey and you've got a blinder of a headache as well, but a common cold?
my two always went to school with a cold. and yes, i understand to other parents this may seem annoying because their children catch it, and if there was a child in the class who had an extremely low immune system that could cause problems, i would have kept them off, but there never was.
everyone gets colds.
thankfully we never had anything worse than one bout of glandular fever!
i sent them off to get sleep, and they could come downstairs in the afternoons for some lunch and TLC

I was playing tennis during my c section then I went home and retiled the bathroom.

BritFish - depends on the level of cold. Some children do come to school full of it and obviously not feeling wll at all. They need to be at home. A heavy cold can be as debilitating as flu.

well that's obviously a blatent lie upandrunning whilst my comment wasn't :p

yes, I'll keep them off with a temp and a cold usually has a temp

they never miss anything that's going to kill them

sorry, I'll have a well done card couriered over and tell my sick child to get over himself

Full of cold and clearly not able to function normally - off. I persuaded DD (3) to go back to bed with such a cold after DS had gone to school (by snuggling with her) - she slept until 1pm.

Snotty nose but otherwise OK - school/nursery. Otherwise they would never be there

see what you mean, upandrunning, about a cold: for an active virus infection I think sleeping a couple of days is an excellent idea

wish people wouldn't have the idea that a child who was off for frequent colds must have a whimpish mother though: some children have poor immune systems instead

my dd is 13: she has a chronic (very painful and debilitating) joint disorder and a dodgy immune system which means she gets every cold and flu going and fairly pronounced emotional problems- partly, because when I first found myself the mother of the child who was sick all the time, I handled it badly. I had this image of myself as a common sensical, down-to-earth, no-nonsense mother, and when dd wouldn't fit into that image, I am afraid I took it out on her. Or at least sent very conflicting signals.