I am VERY VERY cross with DD

[KatyMac]

DD has spent 6.5 days at school so far this year so on Sunday when she had a sore ear I was sympathetic & fed up

She was off school yesterday & sent home today at lunchtime

I took her to the GP & she is fine, no infection, no swollen glands, no reddness (or even pinkness) in her ear

I am SO cross - she is missing guides tonite & going to bed early

I am furious

are there any problems at school that she's not telling you?

Do you mean she has had 6 days off school?

how old is she?? and are you sure she isn;t being bullied to avoid school??

She went in first day (despite complaining of a sore throat) & came home with a raging temperature - the rest of that week she was in bed, unhappy, dosed with calpol

The next week she was not eating, pale, wan and kept getting a temp around 3/4pm

She went in on the Thursday & came home on Friday and was way too poorly (visibly) to go in the next day

I was really bad with an ear infection that weekend & she went in the next week & started complaining of an ear ache on the Friday by Sunday she was on Calpol every 4 hrs and she was really miserable

I kept her off yesterday but she was better by about 2 so I sent her in today

She is 10 & I may kill her

The GP checked her ears/throat/glands/chest/asthma & there is no sign of any infection and her says there haven't really been any poorly with no visible symptoms around recently

my dd has been screaming for 5 days having had a cough/cold yet the doc can find nothing wrong. She's obviously feeling crappy so maybe your dd is too? My dd is too brain damaged to fake anything. Maybe a post-viral thing?
Or there is something up at school that she isn't telling you.

I think she just enjoyed being pampered and cosseted while she was poorly - her dad spent lots of time with her & spent a lot of time tempting her to eat

The second week she was ill - it was a bit post virally

But she admits that she didn't even speak to a teacher she just phoned me to come home - & dipstick that I am I sent DH off to get her as I thought it was the schools decision

You wouldn't if you had listened to her mouth off at me when I said she couldn't go to guides - I didn't know she knew words like that

I am still angry

We run a 'Too ill for school, too ill to do anything but lie in bed' rule in the Bishopric.

If they are very good they may be allowed to read.

I find this gives them the incentive to go back to school when they are well enough.

They were the actual words I used

"If you are too ill for school - you are too ill for guides"

She is in bed early and very angry with me

I went through a spell of doing this when I was a kid. It was soon after my dad left, and I was looking for sympathy.

I was off school for weeks, feigning this, that and the other; dusting my face with talcum powder, etc. In the end, I resorted to stomach ache.

Of course, my mum knew what was going on, but she was trying to balance my unhappiness with hers.

I eventually saw the light and went back to school. I never had a single day off after that until I left at sixteen.

She has just come down to say she has a pain in her neck and she is going to have a pain in the backside soon

I have written in her book - that I think the teacher & I need to have a chat - I hope she understands

I totally agree with not letting her go to guides on a day when she has missed school. And certainly not letting her be rude.

Still, I would like to point out that it is possible to have an earache even without redness in the ear:

if your Eustachian tubes are narrow, it can make you very uncomfortable whenever you have a cold, because of bulging eardrums; this pain can come and go, so may not be apparent when GP is looking

if you have had a lot of pain, your nerve system may go into overdrive so you feel the pain even after the cause is gone (like feeling an amputated arm). When my dd was in hospital she shared a room with a girl who had developed chronic earaches after a bad bout of salmonella.

it can be quite difficult to tell the differences between cold related sore ears/sore throats/achy teeth

Also, children who have a pain and are not believed can get very ratty and rude. And she has been ill.

My dd has had a chronic earache for the last 3 weeks- she goes into school on fairly strong painkillers. GP says it's bulging eardrums, but she also has a chronic pain syndrome. What I have learnt to do, after 4 years of her being in pretty continuous chronic pain, is never to question what she is feeling. Pain is by nature subjective. If she says she is in pain, then she is in pain as far as I am concerned. On the other hand, she has had to learn to accept that it is my responsibility to decide when she is well enough to attend school, pain or no pain. (Not that she always does accept it, but the main point is I accept it.)

So I would sit your dd down calmly and talk the situation through. Explain that she may have earaches that are not actually an illness, that earaches, like a cough, can linger a long time after the actual infection. Try to think of ways of making her more comfortable (early nights, hot drink before bedtime, relaxation exercises, painkillers), but make it quite clear that school has to come before any other activity, and that you will decide when she is fit enough to go to school.

No point in being angry with a child because she is not mature enough to decide which pains are staying-at-home pains, just make the decision for her. Calmly, matter-of-factly, non-judgmentally.

MartianBishop, we do this too. Dd2 (9) was (genuinely) poorly a couple of weeks ago on a Sunday, still not very well on Monday so we kept her off school. She asked if she could sit on the sofa under a blanket and watch tv and was told no! If you are ill then you need to be in bed resting. She was a little taken aback but off she went to bed - and promptly went back to sleep for a couple of hours! She then read in bed until mid-afternoon then asked if she could come through to the living room as she was feeling better - which was fine by us. She went back to school next day. Apart from popping my head round the door every so often to see how she was doing I fairly much left her to get on with it. Fortunately she loves school and couldn't wait to get back the next day, but I think not getting lots of attention for being ill probably helped her speedy recovery

KatyMac, is it worth having the "boy who cried wolf" talk with her?

Katy, I seem to remember your dd was being badly bullied for quite some time and the school were being absolutely useless about it. Is that right?

If so, I can see that she might be tempted to stay at home even if she's only slightly unwell. (Although I agree with posters who have said ear problems do make you feel v. bad so it could well be genuine.)

Perhaps a Big Chat about how the whole bullying thing has affected her attitude to school is in order. Have a look at the Kidscape website - charity that deals with bullying. IIRC I think she's moved schools now, but long-term bullying can affect the way you feel about education even if you've escaped.

I had a similar situation with DD a couple of years ago, when she was about 10 too. I was up and down to the school for days on end. She had broken her arm a few weeks before and so had been in and out of school for hospital etc, and once the plaster came off, it was back to normal service so to speak. It took 3 weeks to get her back into the swing of things. No extra treats because her arm was sore, no extra attention in school etc.

After about 2 weeks of running up and down for her, I told her that unless she was bleeding from the eyes, she was not to come home! It did the trick, she got the message that the pampering was over, quick smart!

My DM used to operate the same policy with us - if you say you are too ill for school, then you stay in bed. Reading allowed, nothing else (and certainly not guides or any other after school activities). On occasions we were taken with her to school (she was a teacher at our primary school) and left outside in her camper van to sleep - I generally got up and went into school by about 11am through sheer boredom

The only exception to this for DS is if he is waiting out the "48 hours from last sickness" before he can go back - but then it is clear to all concerned why he is off school even though he feels fine.