The flu is running amok in our school system right now. I have heard that some teachers have half their classes out. It’s totally ridiculous. We have two children, a 10 year old son and a 9 year old daughter, who are both in the same grade. Our daughter has been out since Monday with the flu. We took her to the doctor Monday morning as soon as symptoms started to appear. The doctor gave us all Tamiflu prescriptions and wrote a doctor’s excuse for the entire week. We dropped almost $300 at the pharmacy for our prescriptions. Thank goodness we have insurance, cause that could have been a whole lot more.
That’s not why I’m so upset. Parents don’t think that their decisions can cause complications for other children. Our perfectly healthy son did not get the flu, and it would have been bad enough if he had: but our daughter, who has type 1 diabetes and who had had a flu shot, is the one who gets the flu. Taking care of a normally healthy child with the flu can be challenging, but there’s so much more to taking care of a child with an autoimmune disorder who also has the flu.
Besides giving her the Tamiflu and Motrin to get her fever down, and Seradex which she keeps throwing up (call is in to the doctor for a replacement medication), we have to make sure her blood glucose stays in a reasonable range. She’s on an insulin pump, so this is not as difficult as it would have been a month ago when she was still on injections. We just have to test her a lot more to keep her in control. But we also have to make sure she doesn’t get a buildup of ketones in her urine. Too much could lead to diabetic ketoacidosis, which at the very least could mean a trip to the hospital. None of us want a trip to the hospital. Thankfully, by keeping her blood glucose in normal ranges, we can avoid that: but with injections, it would have been more of a possibility.
Hubby took some funds up to the school for their field trip on Friday. A child was in the office with a temperature of 103. This was around 8am. This child did not develop a fever between the time he left home and 8am. There is no reason why that child should have even been in school in the first place.
We do our part to take care of our children. Our daughter not only has to look for school snacks that are carb smart for her, but she also makes sure there are no peanut products in her snacks because another child in her room has a peanut allergy. If she has to have her peanut butter crackers to raise her blood glucose, she makes sure she does not eat that in the room and she washes her hands before she goes back to class. She has a huge back-up box in her classroom that has spare supplies of everything she could need, including back-up batteries for her meter. Her brother even carries a spare snack for her in case she goes low. That was his idea: not ours. If we have to do all that to ensure the safety and well being of our children, other parents should do the same.
I’d guess that a lot of parents send their kids to school even when they’re sick because the parents work. If you’re working and your kid gets sick, if you’re hourly, you have to give up some pay (sometimes up to a week’s worth or more, depending on your kid’s illness). That can make a huge difference in your ability to pay bills, get food, etc. if you’re not making a very good hourly wage. Even if you’re not hourly, you might have to take paid time off and lose vacation time or if you have an important meeting with, say, a client or higher up, then you look bad.
That said, I agree that it’s really crappy to send your kid to school sick. It does no one any good and I wouldn’t do it, but I can see why someone might consider it.
In many cases, it might be because the kids lie/exaggerate all the time about being sick to get out of school, and so the parents, hearing them “cry wolf”, make them go anyway, thinking it’s not really serious. And for older kids, it may be the opposite—making up work could be such a hassle that they decide to go despite being sick.
Yeah, all of the above are definitely possibilities. We’re very fortunate in the fact that only one of us works: but if it involves my kids, I can take off at a moment’s notice. When my husband was working, we split the duties. He had an easier time of taking off at a moment’s notice and getting the children: but if the kids needed to be out for an extended period of time, I’d take off. It could result in a loss of pay for him, but we chose to have children and we need to take care of them.
I can also understand about not having backups. We certainly don’t: never have. It’s hard, but it’s part of life with kids. You take it as it comes. Crying “wolf” doesn’t work with us. Our son puts up a fight to go to school at times, but we take his temperature and tell him if it’s normal, he goes. He calms down once he gets there and does fine. But we do make sure he’s not really sick outside of his normal anxiety before we send him.
Many people can and do lose their job if they take off too much (or without notice). When you say taking care of your kids, that also includes feeding and clothing them. Some people take the chance of sending kids with mild symptoms to school so they can keep a roof over their head.
Many people also don’t have the luxury of a two-income family.
Another thing is that you can spread the flu around a day or so before you start showing symptoms. So, you could pull your child out when he starts feeling sick, but by then the damage my have been done.
There are so many reasons parents send kids to school sick that I can’t find it in me to agree with your ire. I know it sucks to have a sick kid who is otherwise healthy, and can only imagine how sucky it is in your shoes with your daughter, but to be fair, many things (like the flu) are contagious before symptoms show up, so your daughter may very well have gotten it from a kid that wasn’t having symptoms.
Yeah. Saturday our baby started barfing. Sunday I started barfing. Monday, the older kid was still fine, so I sent her to school.* Of course, Monday night she started barfing. Considering that everyone who came within a hundred foot radius of us seems to have come down with it, I don’t doubt a good portion of the kindergarten class is now blowing chunks. I feel bad about that, but I couldn’t really do otherwise.
There’s also the fact that kids can easily have 8 colds a year (per WebMD, Mayo Clinic website, and others). 8 colds a year X 4-7 days (conservatively) of illness per cold = 32-56 days potentially absent in a school year. That is just not doable, so we basically have to send our kids in when it seems they have a minor cold, and hope it doesn’t turn out to be the flu or something.
I feel for you, and I hope your daughter gets better soon.
*Adding pressure to send her was the fact that we took her out for a vacation for 10 days, and now the school is all up in my grill saying we need to have a doctor’s note for every subsequent absence. What can I do, take her to the doc and ask for a note stating she might get sick?
They’re doing you a favor by allowing your kid an opportunity to boost their immune system. In today’s hypo-allergenic and anti-bacterial developed nations, inconsiderate assholes may be the only thing standing between us and a pandemic from a superbug.
My mum used to do this with me - I got bronchitis a few times every winter, with really bad wheeziness so I could hardly walk. (Was later diagnosed with asthma.) She was a homemaker so there was no issue with missing work, but she’d still send me to school, I think because she didn’t want me around the house all day.
It’s so miserable having to go out when you’re that sick; I still think ‘Grr’ when I think about it. I can understand a parent’s frustration about a sick kid infecting theirs, but I always feel sorry for the poor kid when I hear about one going to school sick.
My son is prone to febrile seizures because his temp raises so fast - he can seriously be fine one minute and ten minutes later have a 103 degree temp. (He’s outgrown the seizures - he hasn’t outgrown quick spikes) Yes, that happens. Moreover, maybe he didn’t leave home half an hour earlier - my kids start their day an hour before school starts in before school care. If they get ill (and they have) in before school care, its usually the start of the school day by the time I commute across town back to get them.
There’s also the school’s absentee policy to consider. Some schools are so anal about attendance that you’re afraid to keep them home too many days, linking “excessive” absences with the real possibility of grade failure.
Also, they hype the perfect attendance awards so that some kids won’t admit they’re sick, lest they lose out on the certificate/medal/field trip (yes, my kids’ school DOES take the PA kids on field trips–just for planting their asses in a seat every school day). I even heard the school principal bragging on some kid who refused to leave early when he needed to just so he could keep his all-wonderful attendance record.
Of course, then MY kids are the ones who get to stay home playing mucus factory. :mad:
Yup, I’m with you there. This is one thing I am thankful for with our daughter: because of her 504 (Americans with Disabilities Act), she cannot be punished for missing school because of doctor’s appointments. Sadly, we have to be more careful with our son. Hubby not only takes care of them, but he takes care of his mom. If he has to take her to the doctor, and there’s no one here to meet them from the bus, then he has to pull them out early. Same thing if our daughter has a doctor’s appointment. I’m at work til 7pm M-Th, and no one around here is capable or interested in caring for her diabetes. I trust her to do it, to an extent: but she’s 9 years old. That’s a lot of responsibility. She’s doing most of it herself, but with her bread addiction…
My stay-at-home mom believed it was better to go in if you weren’t feeling well, and have to come home early, than to stay home only to find that in a hour or so you’re doing fine. Two things to add is one, if we were really sick, like vomiting or feverish, we did stay home, and two, I can seriously be super sick for an hour or two and then be right as rain for the rest of the day.
In defense of the “stupid parents”, if they were in a situation like mine they wouldnt have been aware of their child being sick until the school calls requesting them to pick up their kid. Mostly because the child didnt speak up during everyone’s mad dash to get ready. Sometimes the kids were out the door for the bus before I could even blow them a kiss, and sometimes I was out the door only moments after waking them up.
And then there are parents who let their children stay home from school for every sniffle and every time “tummy ache” is mumbled - legit or not.
In general, I think people get sick pretty much whenever the local variant of the cold/flu has adapted enough to get over their body’s defenses. At that point, you’re pretty much going to catch it regardless of anything. Going through a lot of effort to quarantine it is 95% just spending time and effort on something that isn’t going to be stopped.
In Japan everyone wears face masks and goes out. But I bet if you tallied it up that the rate of colds caught per year per capita is pretty much constant by level of nutrition, regardless of country and whether they have face masks, take time off from work/school, or go to work/school irregardless.
I did not know that. Thank you for clearing that up, and I’m glad he’s outgrown the seizures. I’ll bet that was just plain frightening.
Point taken. Heck, you can’t even do any kind of preventative maintenance for the flu: she had a flu shot, and apparently got a different strain. You try to do everything you can for them, and it’s a bad feeling to think your efforts fell short.
It is so hard to tell when they are “really” sick. Last week middle son sounded horrible in the morning, snuffly, coughy, there was no way he was faking anything. so I kept him home, but by 9:30, having been vertical for 2 hrs. no sniffling, coughing, sneezing, nuthin. Delighted to be home of course, but obviously at complete functionality for a school day.
Before Christmas oldest son starts getting all whiny at the bus stop, “Mom, my stomach hurts” I mean what am I supposed to do, say, “Oh, well then, let’s head home immediately”
But I got a call within 30 minutes. Apparently he stepped off the bus, threw up everywhere in the parking lot and was sent straight to the office.
sorry about your daughter though, it’s scary when they’re so sick! Hope she gets better soon and nobody else gets it.
