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Show Keep sick kid home 5til well. By RODNEY A. POLLARY, M.D. When to send children back to school after illnesses. When a mother or father brings her child to the pediatrician, the goal is to help them feel better. This may be as simple as using an antibiotic anti-biotic or as the case with many virus-like illnesses, time will have to pass before they get better. So the question often comes: I have to go back to work, when can I take my child back to daycare? Or an equally frequent question comes: com-es: He has missed so much school, he has to go back or he will miss too much and may fail. You may have asked this question ques-tion of your pediatrician and received re-ceived an answer that was not straight-forward. That is because it is not an easy answer. The pressures press-ures of parents' work, the pressures press-ures of school, and the lack of available avail-able resources to take care of children chil-dren if they have to stay home all make the decision difficult. Further complicating this decision deci-sion is that each child seems to get better at a different rate. The prediction pre-diction about how long an illness will last or how long it will be contagious conta-gious is just guess work. The considerations in keeping a child home are: How long will they be too sick to function in school and how long are they contagious to other people? Each decision will have to be made separately for each child as they become sick. Start by having your child seen by the pediatrician to check for illnesses that can be treated with antibiotics, such as strep throat or ear infections. Whether the illness is treatable or not, ask how long the pediatrician expects the contagious period to last or how long other children with similar-type illnesses have been out of school. The guidelines for returning to daycare or school would be the following: fol-lowing: The illness should be im- proving. Symptoms such as fever, vomiting, viral rashes, strongly indicate in-dicate active disease and illness will spread to others more easily. Symptoms such as cough, runny nose, diarrhea can go on for more prolonged periods and are contagious conta-gious early on, but with time the child could be allowed to go back to school, providing the symptoms can be "contained." That means if the cough is frequent, fre-quent, projectile and "wet," it is still contagious, but if it is a dry, infrequent cough, that gives your child time to cover his mouth it is less of a threat. Another good guide is the activity activ-ity of your child. A sick child is tired, listless and needs rest. A child getting better resumes the normal play-time activities. The main factor in all this is how well the illness can be contained. Parents will often take their children chil-dren to daycare sicker than they should be, then other children get the illness and pretty soon it becomes be-comes a merry-go-round as the illnesses just keep going around and around through the group. Older children aren't as easy to keep home, but do have the ability to cover their mouths, wash their hands and take care not to spread infection. But they need to be reminded, re-minded, it is their responsibility to protect their friends. No one likes having sick chil-dren. chil-dren. Everyone wants them to keep ( well all the time. If they do get sick, take the time to care for them. See ', the pediatrician, nurse them and care for them and keep them home as long as necessary. If you send them back too soon, you may well see the same illness come back time and time again as it cycles through schools and daycare. |