PLEASE, my fellow moms -- if your child threw up last night’s dinner or had the loo permanently stuck to their bottom last night, 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 mommy 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 (that's Tylenol if you haven't figured it out yet) 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.
This post was written by Susanna, an Expat Mums Blog founding contributor. You can read more at her blog, A Modern Mother.
Photo credit: unklejman
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