As a birthmother of an eleven year old girl, I’ve had opportunity to be a part of the “sick day discussion” for many years. Shortly after I placed my birthdaughter in an open adoption, I became privy to the constant conversation about childhood illness, contagions, vaccinations, play-date etiquette, and, of course, the always looming question: should I keep my kid home from school?
When my four year old started preschool last year, it was our first experience with out-of-home care. I took the school’s requests to keep your child home if they are feverish, or have a runny nose, very seriously. As a new mom, I thought they actually meant that you should keep your sick kid home. I was surprised to discover, as the school year went on, that I must have been one of the only parents to interpret the request as I had.
Each day it seemed half a dozen or so kids were wiping thick, green snot off their upper lips with the backs of their hands, snorting post-nasal drip back up their throats, and glowing red with the dewy perspiration of fever. By mid-November it seemed that no one thought keeping their child home when he or she was ill was little more than a suggestion.
As the threat of Swine Flu gathered momentum over the winter months, I dutifully kept my sick daughter home for the mandatory seven days after the start of a fever and twenty four hours after the end. I did my best to contain her germs when she was under the weather. The trouble was, on the days that Twila came down with a serious cold or flu, it wasn’t until I picked her up from school and saw the pink glow in her cheeks and her drooping eyelids (those telltale signs) that I knew she was coming down with a bug. I would keep her home for the remainder of the week but the damage was already done.
According to Robert W. Frenck Jr., MD, professor of pediatrics and member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Disease, a child is contagious before she shows any signs or symptoms of a virus. That means that at any given time, a preschool classroom could be crawling with contagious children who seem healthy. When the fever flush and glassy eyes show up, the germs are already present and have likely been spread.
So does it really help to keep your child home when she is sick? I asked myself this question no less than twenty times during my daughter’s first year of preschool. Surely it helps to not have a sick kid spraying germs all over the toys, tables and her friends each time she coughs or sneezes, I would answer myself and make that familiar call to the teacher to announce Twila’s absence.
It was early in March last year when I sighed, once again on the phone with my daughter’s teacher on a Monday morning, “And I suppose I’ll keep her home until next week since she has a fever today. I guess she can come back next Tuesday…”
“Well,” her teacher interrupted me, “why don’t you just wait and see how she feels tomorrow. If she perks up just bring her in.”
But wasn’t the school’s policy to wait seven days after the fever broke? I wondered. Perhaps my daughter’s teacher was seeing the absurdity of a policy that is only observed by half the class. I was beginning to see it too. In fact, it seemed like each time I brought my child back to school after her mandatory seven day sick leave (during which she usually bounded happily around the house, bouncing off the walls and jumping on the couch as she does when she’s healthy) she was greeted be several of her classmates donning runny noses and sweaty foreheads. It felt like I was fighting a losing battle. Indeed some weeks it felt like Twila was only in school often enough to contract another virus.
It was around this time that I started asking other mothers for advice. Sandy, mother of my birthdaughter Nicole and the most seasoned mother I know who currently has kids in the school system, had become much more relaxed about germs, sickness and school. “It’s unavoidable when they’re in school,” she said simply, with the confidence of a mother of three. I realized then that she was probably right.
Even if every mother was as conscientious and careful as the most cautious mother, there would still be the mysteriously contagious twenty-four hour period prior to each virus. Maybe any time a group of children are gathered together on a regular basis, the spread of viruses through the close contact and forgetful hygiene of the energetic toddler, is unavoidable.
Of course, I’m not going to start sending my sick child to school as a matter of course. It is not a lost cause to try and keep our children healthy. It’s also not fair to expose a group of healthy toddlers to your child’s illness simply because your child already has the illness, in fact I can imagine nothing more selfish.
But this year I am taking a slightly more relaxed approach to childhood wellness. Since most preschoolers spend the entire year sporting that seasonal runny nose, I no longer see a little congestion as an obstacle to going to school. Unless her snot is visible and green (a sign of a viral infection according to Laura J Martin MD) I’m not going to deprive her of time with friends and messy crafts; or deprive myself of guilt-free quiet time.
Kids get sick. As Dr Frenck says, “Parents aren’t being bad parents if their kids get colds, or ear infections, or diarrhea, it just happens.” We don’t want them to, we worry when they do, and it is our responsibility to try and prevent them from spreading their germs to others, but the fact remains that they get sick. Children spread germs more readily than adults and they catch viruses more easily, especially when they are herded together in large groups. So part of our job as parents is also to let go of that delusion that we can control every aspect of our children’s health.
We should keep them clean and warm, teach them about coughing etiquette, and support their immune systems with vitamin D, probiotics, and immunity boosting foods. And then we just have to let them get sick.
Look here for eight ways to boost your and your child’s immunity, by Dr Sears.
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