Parents of 6/7 year olds - do you test your children weekly?

[knittingaddict]

Just that really. I vaguely knew that it was a recommendation, but I thought it was mainly for 11 year olds plus. Are the majority of the parents of younger children testing 2 or 3 times a week? Someone has suggested that they should be.

No, not for our primary dc. Dh and I test most days. When they've been close contacts we've done lfts and pcrs. Dd has now had covid.

I don't test 8yo DS.

Thank you for the replies so far. It helps to hear what others are doing in real life.

Been specifically told not to by local health team via the School (the message being that LFTs are not suitable for young children. Get a proper PCR if symptoms or close contact)

Lateral flow tests work perfectly well in young children. My 8 year old tested positive in one. We don’t test regularly though, only when he has cold symptoms.

I don't test my 7 year old regularly, but tested daily before school when his sister had COVID.

I test my 6 and 8 year olds fairly regularly - every week or so. Only ever up the nose, but doing it doesn’t bother them at all. Not had a positive yet (touch wood!).

Absolutely not. The only time I tested him was when me and DH had Covid (DS was positive too). I would never have done it before and after.

School are thankfully very pragmatic about it and don't require them even if they have a cough etc, they seem to understand that there are a lot of things going around.

(As a side note I know absolutely loads of people who have had Covid and not one of them had a cough!)

No I'm not. Mine are both primary age but Ds is in year 6, Dd younger. Their school said that regular lft testing is recommended in children under 11.

My two have had a few pcr tests though.

I guess there's nothing wrong with doing so though and perhaps if my children's school had a lot of cases I would buy at the minute, they don't.

Another big problem is people relying on pcrs. A friend of mine said her son had a hacking cough, didn't pcr him just did an lft which was negative so he went to school! I mean it's just as likely to be a cold type cough - my own have have had it. But the cough her son has, I would have definitely did a pcr.

No. I had to test PCR test DD when she was a close contact and she was traumatised

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

Been specifically told not to by local health team via the School (the message being that LFTs are not suitable for young children. Get a proper PCR if symptoms or close contact)

That's what my daughter has done. Symptoms on Sunday evening and pcr test on Monday.

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

I didn't want to skew the results before, but the person condemning her for not doing it is an abusive ex. It's tied her in knots again and I said I would check with mn for her.

No. I had Covid in September and haven't tested six year old DS since then (he had it too) and never tested him before that.

We lateral flows test our primary age children once a week (the tests don’t bother them).

We picked up covid in both of them last week (they both have no symptoms). DH and I tested positive a couple of days later.

Glad we did do LFTs as it saved some spreading it around at school.

No. It's the parents of primary kids who have been asked to do lfts, nt the kids themselves.

I am part of a primary school leadership team. We are pleading with parents not to rely on LFD tests but to access PCR tests if their child has symptoms (or is at all unwell, or has a positive household member) 25% of our pupils have a current Covid infection.

No. My DS has only had to take one PCR and it took hours and he was traumatised. Im not putting him through it again if I don't need to.

A holiday club asked for our to test, age 7 and 9, before coming in the summer. We have kept up with it a couple of times a week.
Recently been daily as DD7 was a close contact. Negative pcr so back to school but daily lft just in case.
I've been testing 2x a week since January for my job.
So far all negative.

@eurochick

No. It's the parents of primary kids who have been asked to do lfts, nt the kids themselves.

Is it?

My daughter tests regularly as she is customer facing.

I tested both my DS's at the weekend prior to a trip to their grandma. Thank goodness we did. DS6 was positive with absolutely no symptoms.

I would wholeheartedly recommend testing all children prior to visiting vulnerable people at the very least. Relying on PCRs is not enough when a lot of children don't exhibit symptoms.

My 6 year old can easily stick the swab up his nose himself. It's not traumatic for most kids.

Yes I am because unfortunately cases are high here and the school are failing to give any heads up of cases. There's a huge push in our school for attendance and even at drop off you can see and hear clearly unwell children being allowed to attend. Other local schools are sending children home with any symptoms and requesting tests and also notifying close contacts to get tested. As our school is lacking it's only right I do my bit to make sure we're not spreading anything.

No we don't test. Have only once recently done an LFT as a close friend (though not in her class) tested positive and we were about to holiday with (albeit vaccinated) grandparents. Only one of them had had their booster and they were happy for an LFT.

Sorry but I think it's madness to subject children of this age to regular testing unless there's a vulnerable relative. We've always tried to keep things as normal as possible and not subscribe to the madness.

No, I didn't (DC9).

They've just had COVID so probably wont now either.

N o way. My 6 year old had to do a PCR a few months back and that was really unpleasant for him. No way would I be putting him through lateral flows on a weekly basis. Our primary school have never asked for this.

I used to, but won't bother now . The flow tests were still showing negative when ds had a positive pcr test
I actually don't see the point in them .