The issue of sickness in childcare is a tricky one, especially because babies get sick a LOT. As such cases of kids getting flu or any other infection from the daycare are not new. Given the high number of kids that daycare hosts, the high cases of infection transmissions are expected.
It is annoying that this tends to be so frequent that your baby may fall sick at least once a week. So how do you decide if you should still send them to daycare or keep them home?
When is it ok to send a sick baby to daycare?
When is it not ok sending a sick baby to daycare?
When do you keep the baby home from daycare?
All these questions are answered in the post.
In this post
When Is It Ok To Send Sick Baby To Daycare?
When Is It Not Ok To Send Sick Baby To Daycare?
When you are Allowed to Send Sick Baby To Daycare
1. Send Baby to Daycare if it is a Mild Sicknesses
Sickness in children varies in intensity, which is very crucial in deciding whether you can take your child to daycare or keep them at home. Some sicknesses are mild such as a cold and others are serious such as diarrhea.
As such what your baby is suffering from will help you decide if it is ok to send them to daycare or keep them at home. If the baby just has a running nose and is happy to partake in regular activities at the center then it is ok to send her/him to daycare. This case cannot be compared with when the child has a fever and can barely eat or stay up.
2. You can Send Baby to Daycare if it is within the Daycare Sick Policy
If your situation is one within or allowed by the daycare Sick-child Policy, then is okay to take your sick child to daycare. All daycares should have a sick-child policy. The policy explains how sickness cases in children should be handled.
Check out what you daycare sick-child policy is as some are more lenient and other strict, even with mild colds. In major daycares, cough/sniffles/runny nose are all fine for children to daycare rather than staying home.
Read: Questions you Should Ask during Daycare Tour
When you cant Take Sick Baby To Daycare
1. If your Sick Child has a Serious Sickness/Fever, Dont Take them to Daycare
Depending on the seriousness of your baby’s sickness it may not be ok to send them to daycare. Serious sickness hurts the health of the baby and prevents them from participating in regular activities.
They may also be infectious to others hence affect the health of other kids at the daycare too. Fever is especially a common case whereby the child should not be sent to daycare.
As such, children with these cases of illness should stay home until they have recovered instead of going to daycare while sick. This is basically means being fever and symptoms-free without medication for 24 hours before one can return to the daycare.
Working moms are advised to keep their child at home or to seek alternative care arrangements for serious cases such as pain, a cold with listlessness, difficulty in breathing, sore throat or trouble swallowing, severe itching, headaches, etc. or unwell enough to take part in the regular programs of the program.
Read: How to Avoid your Baby Catching Daycare Bugs
2. If your Sick Child has an Infectious Illness, Dont Take them to Daycare
If the baby is suffering from a highly infectious illness, it is best to seek medical help and keep them monitored at home instead of taking to daycare. This is very important for the health of other kids at the daycare who may catch the infection from him/her.
Generally, it’s very critical that a sick child stays home because if they don’t, it will create a cycle or ongoing sickness that will persist and will cause everyone to have to take more days off work than they’d like. Keeping the sick child who has infectious illness at home is one way of preventing daycare sicknesses.
3. Dont Take your Sick Child to Daycare if their Immune is Compromised
Daycares are not good for a baby’s immune system. If your child is immune-compromised, it is best to keep them home on the first signs of any illness instead of taking them to daycare. This is because taking them to daycare while already sick is exposing them to more health vulnerabilities.
The daycare has more chances of infections and your child may end up contracting even more complications. As such you should keep your sick child home from daycare in such cases.
3. Dont Take your Sick Child to Daycare if it is Against Daycare Sick-child Policy
Some daycares don’t allow sick children at all as part of their sick-child policy. They send them home even at the first slightest sign of sickness. For instance fever/diarrhea/vomiting is not allowed by most daycares and can only return 24h after symptoms are gone.
Also, some daycares require clearance from a doctor after a certain amount of days out has been hit. Hence your daycare sick-child may prevent you from taking your child there even if you wanted to.
This is regardless of the seriousness of the sickness and is done to protect the kids who may get infections. This is probably also for the best because it will protect your child from catching sicknesses from other kids from the daycare.
Read: Tell Tale Signs of a Bad or Good Daycare
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