Child sent home from nursery but completely fine

[boymama55]

Hello,

So today I was at work when I got a call from nursery this morning. My 3 year old had been saying that his neck was hurting and he also didn’t seem like himself and kept tugging his ears. He had been up in the night playing with his little brother, turning the landing lights on and waking us up 🙈
I explained this and it was more than likely that he was tired and probably just seeking attention and asked if they could see how he was after a nap and they were fine to give him longer as I knew he was probably just sleep deprived. He had a huge tantrum in his way to nursery this morning so I already suspected he was probably over tired but apart from that did not appear unwell otherwise we wouldn’t have sent him in to begin with.

Half an hour later I got another call to say he now had a temp of 38 and that coupled with him complaining of neck pain he needed picking up. I of course agreed and when asked if they could give him calpol I said yes - our nursery have a policy where by if they give calpol then the child needs to go home unless it is prescribed by a doctor. On my way to collecting him I managed to get him an appointment at our go for late afternoon.

Anyway went to pick him up and he seemed happy as Larry and the girl that brought him out to me even said that he had perked up and his temp was now down to 37. Went to gp as scheduled as felt that we might as well go, now that I had the appointment and you just never know do you? As suspected (gut instinct and this has happened before) he was absolutely fine, no temp, no ear infection, throat fine, breathing and heart rate fine.

Would love to know if this has happened to anyone before and did you find it annoying?
Half a day as meant that I’ve probably lost out on at least £100 in lost earnings and child care as we have to pay in advance for nursery and we don’t get that money back - we even get charged on bank holidays and Monday is their set day 😒 and we were also really short at work today so not ideal. I just feel like if I keep pushing back and then something was really wrong that makes me the bad parent.
I obviously don’t have an issue with looking after my child when he is sick and I completely understand that that they have to follow correct protocol for children in their care. I just find it incredibly frustrating when there isn’t actually anything wrong with him.

The doctor even said that any thermometer other than an in ear one is inaccurate and I know that they don’t use one of those as give asked before in the past.

The neck pain they may have thought could be meningitis as a worst case scenario? Otherwise yes it's super annoying. I would love it of their policy was to refund on sickness like this. It would be much fairer and easier on parents.

It has happened to me and yes it is ultra annoying. The cynic in me decided it was because they knew I was a SAHM and my child was difficult. They have SEN. It always seemed to be my child who had sickness or my favourites, 'unsettled' and 'not themselves', on a Monday morning.

Now that nursery is a long time ago and I've almost forgotten the pain of 'the phone call', I think you got it in your OP, you just can't be too careful. Toddlers are not reliable narrators when discussing symptoms and nurseries need to act eith a duty of care. Just imagine if your LO really was sick and he'd been left at nursery all day.

@Kaleidoscopic101 yes, I think that’s what the line of thinking was with the neck pain - meningitis. As they said that they had checked for a rash when they called about the neck pain and there was no rash but they would monitor it but then the temperature meant they definitely didn’t want to risk keeping him in any longer. The neck pain was also the main reason I got him a gp appointment as a just incase. In his first 6 months at this nursery he was sent home about 4 times with a temp and because he only 9-13 months old at the time I took him to the gp every time and they could never find anything wrong with him or a high temp 🙈

GPs don't want to see every child within hours of a fever. Granted this time with the neck pain made sense but no need to go every time if not too worried otherwise.

I'm a teacher. My headteacher joked that he was going to charge my child's nursery for cover teacher fees. He got really irritated with the number of times they phoned to say I had to collect my child. This was shortly after Covid. On one occasion, my child cough once and they insisted that they went home. It got so frequent that HR told my headteacher to give me a warning for absence. Thankfully he didn't but said he wouldn't be able to put it off if I had to leave again. Since my child started school, I haven't had any absence so it was solely down to the nursery being awkward about everything. When they were genuinely ill, I kept my child at home.

I was discussing it with my husband this evening and he said it’s like being caught between a rock and a hard place. It is incredibly annoying, especially as we know they will most likely be off with another bug before Christmas. Both my toddlers were hit with chicken pox last month and resulted in time off work between us and several missed nursery days and I accepted it as one of those things and made sure we fully quarantined as didn’t want to spread it. Like I said, I obviously want to be off with my child if they are ill, but I also don’t want my 3 y/old to think he will get sent home every time he says something hurts just so he can have a “mummy & Connell day” (are we having a mummy Connell day is what he said when we left nursery, followed by yay 😂) and I definitely don’t want nursery to pander to it either if that is the case. He told me the other day that I hurt him when I put his shoes on 🙈 I guess I’ll just have to keep an eye on it but hoping my toddler saying he’s in pain at nursery if he actually isn’t is just a one off?

Ahh thank you for sharing, I’m glad to know that it isn’t just our nursery that are super cautious! I definitely can’t do the next pick up for sickness until mech year now as I think work will make an issue of it next time 🙈

Why did he have a temperature?

I agree with them sending him home in this situation. If they hadn't and it had have been meningitis you would have been angry. I appreciate it's frustrating though.

Your child had a fever. Some kind of infection was causing that and they have a duty of care to all the other children. He was also given calpol which obviously brings down the fever and makes children appear like there's nothing wrong.. ..

one of my nurseries was awful for that when they were a bit short staffed. I took to saying ‘no calpol’ until I’ve come and checked temperature and it was usually normal.

they stopped calling me so much and moved on to my friend.

I agree with the post saying to decline calpol and check the child’s temp when you get there. This should stop unnecessary calls. Also check the sickness policy and confirm what is classified as sickness. It could be something like a particular temperature taken twice thirty minutes apart or throwing up or an upset stomach twice. If staff will call over a child just saying they are sick all the time, you can question it.

I think you are being very unreasonable. Nurseries have these policies for a reason, children with temperatures (as per NHS guidelines) should not be in school/nursery. The nursery simply did what they had to do, he had neck pain too so potentially had something serious/contagious. Unless you want staff to get ill and the nursery to close? A poorly child needs one to one attention and comfort and nurseries just don’t have the capacity for that. Yes he picked up after a bit of Calpol but most children do, doesn’t mean the virus has gone, just means that paracetamol is treating the symptoms. I understand you have been highly inconvenienced by all this but you’re a parent and sometimes you have to step up and put your child’s needs first as well as the health of other children.