So in your opinion is this being a responsible parent or not?

last14real · August 2014

There is a hot button issue at my children's daycare right now. The issue being parents who bring their kids to daycare sick bc they HAVE to work. Our daycare states that if the child has a temp over 100 or diahrea they can be sent home if not they can pretty much be there. Sounds pretty reasonable except they are sending a child home who has diahrea caused by an antibiotic for an ear infection but keeping babies with sicknesses such as hand foot and mouth and pink eye!! The hand foot and mouth is the big issue right now bc technically your kid shouldn't be contagious when they have been fever free for 24 hrs. The daycare's policy is that you can bring the child back 24 hrs after the fever ends which in theory means they are no longer contagious. Here's the problem some kids don't get every symptom associated with the illness so a mom brought her LO (10months) to daycare with no fever but bumps on legs/feet and around his mouth...hmmm kinda sounds like hand foot and mouth. He was allowed to stay all day due to lack of fever. This was Tuesday, as of the previous Friday there was 1 out of 8 babies sick in that room, now 5 out of 8 are sick including my 11 month old niece and the little boy previously mentioned. To me this is completely unacceptable, if my child is sick I try hard not to expose other children. Is it inconsiderate of me to expect other people to do the same? I understand everyone pays and has a right to have their children be there but I just can't wrap my brain around knowingly exposing other peoples kids bc technically your kid doesn't have the fever and is "allowed" to be there. Thoughts? Would you take your child or keep them home?

Rebis58 · August 2014

Honestly? Maybe I should save this for FFFC but... as long as my child wasn't miserable and they fit in with the rules of the daycare policy I would probably bring them to daycare and go to work. DD hasn't been sick yet so maybe my opinion will change.

peanutmuse · August 2014

To be honest, if I was sending my child to daycare, I would expect him to get sick. And when they are so little, sometimes it's extremely difficult to figure out what is just a sniffle or skin irritation and what is a true illness until (unfortunately) it's too late. Of course, there are exceptions, and I'm sure that there are irresponsible parents. But I'm thinking of myself right now and how I can't figure out what the heck is going on a lot of the time, but I don't think I'm being intentionally irresponsible. I hope that makes sense.

SandFHasse · August 2014

She might not have known. DS has had a rash since he got his vaccines, but he hasn't had a fever. Kids get sick, kids get rashes. It happens.

last14real · August 2014

@esd I will give this mom the benefit of the doubt on she may not have known when she got there, but she knew before she left the baby. My SIL was in the room and the daycare worker looked in the baby's mouth and saw blisters which she showed the mom. The mom still left him, yes the DC worker is not a dr but she is around babies all day and has seen this multiple times. @peanutmuse I definitely agree that rashes and hfm can be hard to tell apart especially if they don't get the inside mouth blisters. Or if you have never seen the illness in person, but when someone tells you could you still leave him? I understand that kids get sick and babies will be exposed at daycare that being said if I as a parent KNEW my baby was newly ill with something she has never had I could not leave her. If it's a runny nose, cough, cold thing no biggie bc especially in the winter one if the babies always has a cold but stuff like hfm and pink eye which are both highly contagious?There was another instance where a mom brought a bb with matted swollen eyes (pink eye) no fever so they had to keep her. There are two teachers in the room and one spent the entire day comforting that one baby and trying to keep her away from the other babies. 3 ended up with pink eye. In that case the baby was miserable so that really irritated me when I saw her I wanted to take her home and take care of her myself. I'm not trying to be argumentative I honestly would like to know if anyone has good reasons why it is ok to knowingly leave your sick bb. Is it acceptable to expect dc people to take care of a sick bb? It just seems to be happening a lot lately and I want to know these peoples rational without hurting anyone's feelings.

precious72381 · August 2014

I would be upset to learn a baby had pink eye and stayed. As a parent, I would take off from work and go to the doctor (I never had it, I assume there is medicine). I'm more upset that the parent left the baby there with pink eye. But I know Abby will get colds. She has had a runny nose for almost two weeks now. No fever. She starts daycare Monday. She has to go. My first week back to work. She went to the doctor and he said to just wait it out (continue humidifier and saline spray). I'm lucky that my mil can come over and watch her most of the time (not full time as she lives 45 minutes away and has an afternoon job). So if she did have a fever or pink eye or hfm she could stay home. I do worry about the day daycare calls and say she needs to go home. As a teacher, I can't just leave my students in the middle of class and go pick her up. Any who, now that I made this post about me.

I think the daycare has to follow their own polices they have in place. The poor teacher that probably ended up with pink eye too. But as a parent, I think she should not have left the baby in those situations.

peanutmuse · August 2014

It sounds like a discussion with the person in charge is necessary, then. It's easy for me to say I wouldn't leave a sick baby, but I am a SAHM and don't have to face consequences for missing work. If I think back to my career in Manhattan, my feelings might have been different about it.

bensmommy518 · August 2014

I know I have taken my kids to daycare if they have a cold - I think it is part of being in daycare that they will be exposed to germs and runny noses. I have though kept the kids home if one has a fever, diarrhea or vomiting or if I suspected something more than a cold. If I can tell the kid is miserable I will try my hardest to make arrangements to have either me or DH stay home. Our daycare has the same policy of sending home for fever, diarrhea or vomiting and needing to be free from those symptoms for 24 hours before returning.

Personally I would be upset if my kid was sent home for diarrhea and we all knew it was from the antibiotic but I get that they have to follow their policies. I do think the policy should also have a caveat for situations like the above if they have reasonable suspicion of a contagious illness that they can send home for the day even without fever.

We had an incident in our daycare earlier this year where a couple of babies caught RSV and two turned into pneumonia. DD started getting a cough around this time and I made the decision to keep her home a few days until I could determine if it was just a cough or something more. I have mentioned before that my daycare is a bit unusual in that all of the kids except mine live in the facility that they daycare is in so even when the sick kids are not in daycare, they are still in the building and the germs are everywhere. It really sucked having to arrange mine and DH's schedule to be able to stay home but it was a decision we made based on the situation.

edit to change word

brideandbreve · August 2014

I'm a working mom, but my employer is really unconventional, so it's not a big deal if I have to take time off from work because the kids are sick. (In fact, I'm home today because DD has been running a low-grade fever off and on over the last 24 hours and she's got a bad cough.) That being said, our daycare is on-site at work, so the kids who go there with mine are my co-workers' kids - so we all know each other and we try to be very respectful of not getting each others' kids sick.

That being said, if my baby had bumps in the mouth that seemed to indicate HFM, I'd stay home.. but that's easy for me to say because I have a flexible employer who would absolutely understand.

I ride the fence on this issue, though, because I've been on both sides.

At my previous place of employment, I got reamed by a manager for leaving early to drive an hour south to get my methotrexate injections once a week when I was dealing with the aftermath of my molar pregnancy. The day that I had my DNC, even though I had notified a supervisor, my husband answered a call on my cell phone while I was in the freakin' OR and it was a manager wanting to know where I was. This was not the kind of place that would have understood, "Hey, my kid's got symptoms that are in line with HFM. I can't come in because I can't take my child to daycare." So I understand the working mom struggle, because it really is a matter of choosing the lesser evil: Do you piss off other moms and make their lives miserable, or do you risk getting fired and losing your ability to put food on the table and keep a roof over your heads? I get it. It's not right, but I understand where they're coming from.

And from this perspective where I'm in now, I totally understand the annoyance of people bringing sick kids to daycare. A new employee who believes in the healing powers of essential oils and is a DoTerra rep (*rolling my eyes*) brought her kids last week (after the employee herself told me that she had strep and was treating herself with essential oils), and 2 older kids got sick, and now my baby is sick. So, yeah, I see that side of the argument, too.

PreDempsey · August 2014

My child spends most of his week at daycare so any time he gets sick 9 times out of 10 he picked it up there so as long as he isn't feverish, vomiting, etc. he's going because I don't have a choice. I need to save my sick time for when those aforementioned symptoms are happening.

SunflowersBride · August 2014

This is such a tough subject, because unfortunately in the USA, not only do we lack sufficient maternity leave, but many companies do not offer any paid sick leave either. And it especially doesn't extend to sick kids. So I do sympathize with parents who have jobs that they absolutely HAVE to go to, when missing days could mean bills can't get paid.

On the other hand, I do think it's unfair to intentionally leave a baby you know is sick and contagious in order to infect other children. Not only that, but I personally know someone whose child brought home one of those daycare viruses while the mom was pregnant. She and the fetus got infected, and unfortunately the baby died and she had a very late-term loss. So something else that maybe people should consider when sending their kids in sick.

I think this upsets me more on a societal level in that parents feel they don't have any other options, and nobody in politics cares to figure out a solution. In the meantime, these viruses can have lasting effects on these children for a long time.

Rebis58 · August 2014

junglebaby11 said:

@esd I will give this mom the benefit of the doubt on she may not have known when she got there, but she knew before she left the baby. My SIL was in the room and the daycare worker looked in the baby's mouth and saw blisters which she showed the mom. The mom still left him, yes the DC worker is not a dr but she is around babies all day and has seen this multiple times. @peanutmuse I definitely agree that rashes and hfm can be hard to tell apart especially if they don't get the inside mouth blisters. Or if you have never seen the illness in person, but when someone tells you could you still leave him? I understand that kids get sick and babies will be exposed at daycare that being said if I as a parent KNEW my baby was newly ill with something she has never had I could not leave her. If it's a runny nose, cough, cold thing no biggie bc especially in the winter one if the babies always has a cold but stuff like hfm and pink eye which are both highly contagious?There was another instance where a mom brought a bb with matted swollen eyes (pink eye) no fever so they had to keep her. There are two teachers in the room and one spent the entire day comforting that one baby and trying to keep her away from the other babies. 3 ended up with pink eye. In that case the baby was miserable so that really irritated me when I saw her I wanted to take her home and take care of her myself. I'm not trying to be argumentative I honestly would like to know if anyone has good reasons why it is ok to knowingly leave your sick bb. Is it acceptable to expect dc people to take care of a sick bb? It just seems to be happening a lot lately and I want to know these peoples rational without hurting anyone's feelings.

This would have changed my answer and I would have taken my baby home. When you first described the bumps around the baby's mouth I gave the mom more benefit of the doubt because DD gets red marks around her mouth for longs of things. If her dad kisses her when he hasn't shaved for a few days, if I'm feeding her and she gets a lot of food on her face that I don't immediately wipe off, etc. If I knew with relative certainty that DD had a new, contagious illness I would have taken her home.

munchkinrhodie · August 2014

I'm a preschool teacher and I know the new health policy in my state is that if a child has pink eye we can't send them home unless there is puss. Having this policy for teachers I feel is fine because we get not to touch our eye but I had a child with pink eye 2 years and I believe another 5 kids caught it but sadly, there is nothing we can legally do except tell the parent at pick up that pink eye is going around the room and their child's eye looked a little red and they may want to watch it. The thing that really bothers me is that we no longer can send a child home with lice when a bug is seen. It use to be if you see a crawler you need to send them home. So you can imagine how happy I am when I see a child scratching their head. I know it sucks to have your child exposed to so much but me and my husband decided to look at it like this... our LO may build up a better immune system so when they get older they may not get as sick, just some positive thinking

Lena122 · August 2014

Bump burp

Lena122 · August 2014

I think it's irresponsible to bring a contagious child with anything other than a cold to daycare. Yes kids will get sick at daycare but if you know your kid has pink eye or HFM or the flu you're doing the other kid and even your own kid a disservice. I can't imagine bringing my poor kid with itchy pink eye to suffer through daycare.

I work a 12 hour shifts so taking off one shift puts a dent on my PTO balance. I still wouldn't bring my sick contagious kid to daycare.

ETA: I also have an emergency back up sitter if my kids are sick and I absolutely can't take off work. I realize not everyone has this but I think that it's almost as important as having a primary daycare provider. Particularly if you have strict time off policies at work.

last14real · August 2014

I completely agree that one cause could be parents having work issues. I am lucky that i work for a family owned construction company and have no problem taking off whenever my kids are sick. I used to work for a retail store and I watched people fighting with managers all the time for calling in bc of their own or their child's sickness. I'm sure that SOME of the time the sick child being left may be attributed to calling in causing work issues, but I honestly believe that is not always the case at my particular daycare. The reason I say that is bc it is the CDC (child development center) on an Air Force base. The children that go here have one or both parents in the military. So at least one parent is earning paid vacation time. Which they could use to cover financially (if money is a problem) when they need to miss a day or two. I also know military members in several different squadrons on this base that have supervisors who are very understanding of family issues and may not even make them use vacation if it's only a day or two. As often as sick children are being left I feel like some parents are trying to "get away" with leaving the kids even though they are sick. I don't know if their mentality is they paid so their kid is going, or maybe being sick is no big deal or what but I feel like it is hurting other people's children so they should care. I just don't understand how some people think it's ok to leave their child with pink eye or hfm even though the rules allow it. At the same time I do know there are special circumstance some jobs that have essential personnel who have to be at work and can't call in last minute. Or in the case where the military spouse is deployed and the civilian parent can't take off work an has no one else to leave the child with. So in the event that situation does occur (which I would think would not be a common thing) then maybe like a "school nurse" area where the sick child could stay until someone can pick up would be a viable option? I would think having one extra employee to supervise the ill child would be worth it to prevent other children and teachers from being exposed. Doesn't even have to be a licensed nurse being that all employees are certified in child cpr and life saving precautions, just a thought. I honestly love the daycare, the employees, and about 90% of their policies it just seems this is one area their policy needs some work.

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So in your opinion is this being a responsible parent or not?

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