Please, leave your sick kid at home!

First, check out the Best of the British Mummy Bloggers Carnival. It's up over at Potty's and is a nice collection of cries tales from the trenches of motherhood.

Second, I want to plead with my fellow mums -- if your child threw up last night’s dinner or had the loo permanently stuck to their bottom last night, PLEASE DO NOT SEND HIM TO SCHOOL.

I don’t care if you asked him if he wanted to stay home and he said no. I would want to get out of the house too if I was faced with the choice of helping a grumpy mummy with the growing mountain of laundry the size of Everest or playing with my friends.

The thing is, when you send your sick child to school, they spread their germs. They don’t do it intentionally – they cough or sneeze and the virus suspends itself in mid air, non discriminate on where, or on whom, it lands.

Then other children get the sick bug, and they in turn get their siblings sick, and their parents. Soon the whole town is sick is and throwing up in unison and there is a run on paracetamol at Tesco .

Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not a neurotic mother. When it comes to the common cold and the ubiquous runny nose, I’m the first to surrender to the inevitable. All children in the UK would be home schooled if they stayed home each time they were congested.

But the throw up bug is one of my pet peeves. No one likes to be sick. It’s so humiliating.
The BBC Health site suggests that children are kept home for at least 48 hours after symptoms dissapear.

I broke the news of the presence of the sick bug to one the mums in reception class.  She has a new baby, and just got him sleeping in four hour stretches.

Her eyes got wide and her forehead crinkled, clearly not enamored with the prospect.

I keep my sick kids and home and I wish you would do the same.

Photo credit: unklejman

Comments

[TooManyHats]

Yes, keep them home from school, church, dance class, etc. None of us want it and you would not want it if my kids had it. One thing we all need to learn not to share. Timely advice.

[Liz@VioletPosy]

Here, Here! My daughter's had the winter vomiting virus twice in 4 weeks. Good advice.

[Laura McIntyre]

Im all for not keeping kids off School but could not imagine sending a vomiting child in . I do get paranoid even with coughs and colds as i don't want other kids to get sick and for the parents to blame me

[vidkkingg]

all i can say as a concerned father is....i totally agree

[Miss Behaving]

I agree too.
I seem to remember as a kid that when we had a cold/bug whatever, we were off school for about a week, we went back when it was well and truly over. These days people seem to send their kids back to school/nursery/daycare the minute the fever has gone down.
Aside form the contageous aspect, the body needs time to regroup and recover.