Chicken pox and wedding in 3 weeks!!

[ironman23]

Hi

Looking for some advice - two children in my 7yo DD's (yr 2) class have recently been struck down with chicken pox; first child 2 weeks ago, and now another boy this week.

DD has not yet had it. Myself and DP (DD's dad) are getting married in exactly 3 weeks time (1/6/23) so could really do with her not catching it at the mo. She is flower girl, is really excited about the day, and we'd all be absolutely devastated if she could not come - to the point where I would consider cancelling because the thought of not having her there breaks my heart.

We have kept her off school today, to limit interactions with kids who potentially already have it and are not yet showing symptoms, and have booked her in to have her 1st dose of the CP vaccine this afternoon - I've read that as well as preventing CP, it can help if child has already been exposed. Which chances are, she has.

However, there are still 2.5 weeks of school left before half term - and cp has quite a variable incubation period (10 - 21 days). If it were up to me, I'd keep her off the entire time! (She is doing some SATs this week and possibly next, and has a school trip the following week, so I am reasoning that she won't be missing too much - however, in reality I know that this is not exactly the best course of action, and under any other circumstances I'd have no problem with her being in school. My kids have excellent attendance and are rarely kept off unless they absolutely can not go in).

I know the vaccine does a good job at providing protection, but I want to completely avoid her catching cp at all costs. If I thought the school were a reasonable bunch I'd speak to them about my concerns and have them send home some school work which I'd make sure she gets done - however I don't think this request would be met with much optimism.

Has anyone ever been in a similar predicament???

Oh no! What rotten timing. All you can do is keep her off I think :/ but what the school will make is that I don’t know.

it’s so infectious, it usually spreads round the kids who haven’t had it like wildfire IME. When my youngest had it about 50 odd kids in his nursery of 70 had it too!

I dont think you can keep her off all that time! You'll get a fine most likely. I'd hope if she get's it it's soon and its all done by the wedding.

If it's already in the class she has probably already been exposed. I can't see how keeping her off is going to change that (or that school would accept it as a reason!) as you are contagious for some time before the spots appear

Vaccine sound sensible, but I would suggest you're already in the danger zone so don't make her miss out unnecessarily

I hope she avoids it and that you have a wonderful wedding x

Sorry op but you won’t be able to keep her off that long without repercussions. After 10 days of not being in school children can be reported as missing in education and this can open up a whole host of investigations from social work etc. safeguarding responsibilities of the school mean this is likely to happen. They will not just provide work for her as she is not unwell. If she were actually off sick with chickenpox perhaps but as she isn’t they won’t accept that.

I suppose you could lie and say she has them but you run the risk of your child outing you down the line

It's pretty unreasonable to keep her off school just in case she misses your wedding

IME my eldest caught chickenpox around 2-3 weeks after the first child in class got it - then pretty much the whole class went down

Thank you for all your responses!

And haha @Enigma12 as much as I really want to keep her at home (wrapped up in some bubble wrap preferably!) I know it wouldn't go down well on a number of fronts - it was just a wild thought in my frantic pre wedding brain 😂

So do we think that best course of action is keeping her off until Monday, just to give the vaccine a chance to kick in a bit and start doing its thing, all the while hoping and praying that if she is infected, she comes down with it in the next week-10 days?

If exposure happened just this week via the latest child to be struck down, then we are actually getting vaccine at a good time - apparently one study has said that if given within 5 days, it is 60% effective in preventing cp altogether.

Its most likely she was exposed back when the first child had it, another child has gone down 2 weeks later, so its likely they may all be getting to the point where they have incubated and half the class will be off next week! including your DD.

I agree that it's really awful timing but I can't believe you're seriously considering keeping your daughter off school when she's not ill, or that you've kept her off today.

@Sanch1 oh I really hope so! Then she could have it well out the way by the time the wedding comes around (even if she might look a bit spotty on the photos - will go with her missing two front teeth!)

@Growlybear83 I'm not seriously considering it hence me saying 'in reality, I know that this is not exactly the best course of action'.

And maybe in hindsight keeping her off today was a bit unecessary. But she's in year 2 and would be sitting SATs which are a (IMO) complete waste of time for some of the day, so I don't think it's going to exactly impact massively on her 11+ years of education.