Ella woke up this morning mostly over her cold and very excited that Dad was home sick from work. She didn’t have a fever, all her limbs were still securely attached, she had a little snot peeking out of one nostril and her hair looked terribly under the weather. I said to her, “Let’s get up and eat breakfast, you get to go to school today!” the whiny response was “Ella no wanna go coooooool.” My reasoning faltered and I didn’t know what to say. I know this is slippery territory. I could be setting a terrible precedent, that will cause her to miss whole weeks of third grade while she stays home to perfect the ability to move a thermometer to 99.7* with the heat from her radiator? Should I send her to school were she will cough up her spleen and the teacher will call me and say “What were you thinking Mrs. Bombadee, are you stupid or something, come get your plague ridden kid from my classroom.” I asked Dan what he thought, he shrugged and said “Whatever you think honey” (Thanks for all your wisdom Dan).
I took her to school and I asked the teacher what to do. “Um, hi, Mrs. Teacher, I’m not a very good mom and I don’t know my kid at all, can you please tell me what I’m supposed to do here?” She said there weren’t going to be many kids there today and she thought it’d be fine. Ok parents, how do you gauge it? When do they get to stay home? In my house fever was the indicator, no fever, no staying home and certainly no watching Capt. Kangaroo.
9 comments:
Nelson Household:
Stay Home Without A Doubt Criteria: Fever, vomiting, diarrhea, blinding headache
Try to Make It Through the Day, Go to the Nurse if it Gets Worse: Cough, runny nose, sore throat, tummy ache, mild headache
Don't Even Try to Stay Home:
Kid "I don't feel good"
Mom "What's wrong"
Kid "I dunno, I just don't feel good"
Abigail actually tricked me once, when her homework wasn't done. Now I'm a bit more likely to send them to school without proof of illness.
Turns out, she had a blast at school today. She talked more than ever, painted and made puppets. I think it was an "I dunno, I just don't feel good" that I got from her this morning.
I'm with Tatertot on the "stay home" criteria. The day care will send the kids home (and they cannot return for 24 hours without a doctor's note) for a fever or vomiting, or anything that's contageous such as pinkeye.
We sometimes have the "don't want to go to school" mornings from our big girl, but she's not a morning person anyway. Normally when she comes home she's just fine, as Em apparently was today.
One thing I tend to do when the girls get older is institute an "If you're sick, you must rest" policy. In other words, if you're sick enough to stay home, you must need to lay down for most of the day.
Oh yeah the only laying down happening today is Dan.
When I was little, you only stayed home for a fever. I became a pretty good judge of when I was sick enough (fever or not) to require bed and rest, although my tendency is still to push myself because I am worried about falling behind. My husband, on the other hand, was babied and allowed to stay home from school but go to a party that night. He, as a result, seems to think that it's not a big deal if he's late to work or misses it a lot because hey! He wants to sleep.
I think it's better to keep the kid in school whenever it's reasonable to do so. School is important stuff, and it does get really hard to catch up once you're in high school and beyond.
5:00 update - she's been running around and playing all day. good thing I'm a hard ass ;)
I'm probably the wrong person to ask. Typically it's a fever that's the criteria for staying home but if either Chris or I have been suffering from a cold recently that Lou's having symptoms of (cough, runny nose, etc.) I'll keep him home. But just as it is at Kath's place, if HE asks to stay home and I concede and there's no fever, he has to lay in his bed all day, which to a 13 year old is equivalent to torture so he's learned that the "I'm sick *cough cough* I can't.. go ... to school" way of doing homework probably will net him not only a day of misery but make-up homework that eats up the one hour of xbox time he's allowed the next night lol.
Side note: Soon my blog will be moved to my own domain (couldn't stand the limitations of msn spaces) and Chris will be posting on it as well - a whole new makeover kind of thing. We're calling it Java Junkie and the Monkey.. You can call me JJ for short ;)
Totally looking forward to Java Junkie & the Monkey!
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