Is my Child too Sick to go to Preschool
Making the decision to keep your child home or send them off to preschool when they’re feeling under the weather is one of the more difficult parental choices you may face. This decision will occur frequently throughout your child’s preschool years and into their high school years.
The cold and flu season and other viruses out there in the world make it even more difficult to decide whether your child is too sick for preschool or other childcare facilities. Today we’re going to dive into the topic to help you determine if your child is too sick to go to preschool.
The first step to determining whether your child should go to preschool is to check with your pediatrician or family physician when you have concerns about your child’s health. Your health care professional is in the best position to assess the overall health of your child and make recommendations.
If your child isn’t that sick or the situation doesn’t seem to warrant a visit to your pediatrician, you could give them a call. Most pediatricians will know more about the signs and symptoms of viral bugs going around during this time of year.
Once you’ve completed this step, you’ll want to consider the following issues when trying to decide whether your child is well enough to attend preschool.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the general rule is this: If your child is sleeping, eating, drinking, eliminating, behaving normally, and not running a temperature above 101 degrees orally (or 102 degrees rectally or 100 degrees under the arm), your child can go to preschool or a childcare center.
On the other hand, if your child is not sleeping, eating, drinking, eliminating, or behaving normally, and has a temperature of more than 101 degrees orally, keep your child at home and consult your health care provider.
Most parents don’t have any trouble identifying when their child is really too ill to be at a preschool or a childcare center. They know when their child won’t be able to accommodate group care and needs the individual attention from Mom or Dad. The difficulty arises when the symptoms are not clear-cut.
What do you do when your child has a fever and is lethargic but is still eating, drinking, and eliminating normally? How about when a child has one watery bowel movement and then no more? What if the child has no physical symptoms but is crying and clingy and won’t calm down? This makes it more difficult to determine if your child is too sick to go to preschool.
Making the Decision
Here are some things to take into consideration when making these important decisions about when your child should stay at home.
The first consideration is the severity of the symptoms. If your child has one mild symptom like a runny nose and no others, you can be fairly sure that he or she will have a good day at preschool.
However, even without a fever, if your child was coughing during the night, won’t eat, had difficulty getting out of bed, and cried through breakfast, he or she has too many symptoms to go to school. In general, the more symptoms a child has or the more intense the symptoms are, the more likely the child should stay at home.
The second issue is how fast the symptoms came on. If your child developed a low-grade fever on Sunday afternoon and his or her temperature stayed about the same during the evening with no additional symptoms, you could send the child to preschool.
On the other hand, if the child went from symptom-free in the afternoon to high fever and refusal of food and drink by bedtime, your child is ill. Consult your pediatrician and keep your child at home until his or her temperature and other symptoms have returned to normal.
A third issue is the child’s usual daily pattern. If your child is usually cranky in the morning, you can be fairly sure that morning crankiness isn’t a sign of impending illness.
If your child always has a loose bowel movement after eating spinach, you can usually be sure that one loose bowel movement is not the beginning of diarrhea.
On the other hand, if your child won’t get out of bed, refuses his or her favorite breakfast, and is feverish, something is probably up. Parents are usually in a very good position to spot changes in normal daily patterns so they can check with their pediatrician or family physician to determine if intervention or staying home from preschool is required.
The American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines suggests that parents focus their attention on how sick the child looks and acts rather than on isolated symptoms like fever. Children who refuse to play normally or complain of pain should see a doctor.
Sending Your Child Home
Preschool teachers are trained to recognize the symptoms of illness in children, and most childcare centers have very specific health guidelines that teachers follow in determining whether a child is too sick to stay at preschool. In general, teachers will look at the same things parents do – indications that the child is not eating, drinking, sleeping, eliminating, or behaving normally. There are also a few special considerations.
The most important one is how well the child is coping as part of a group. Some children do very well when they are not feeling 100 percent healthy. Others require a great deal of extra time and attention and feel miserable. When the care of a child who does not feel well interferes with the care of other children at preschool, you will be asked to pick up your child.
Another consideration is cleanliness. A child whose stool is not contained in the diaper presents a unique problem in preschool or a childcare center. If your child has uncontrolled stool or frequent loose stool that is not contained in the diaper, you will be asked to pick up your child.
The same is true for vomiting, such as vomiting that empties your child’s stomach. Due to the risk of contamination from vomit, children who vomit more than once in a 24-hour period must be picked up from preschool or a childcare center.
Medicines at Preschool
If your child is well enough to come back to preschool or the childcare center but is still medicated, the center can typically administer his/her medication for you. You’ll need to make it clear on the Medication Authorization form and My Day form for your preschool or childcare center what time of day and how often the medication(s) must be given.
Most preschool and childcare center policies require that the Medication Authorization form be filled out each and every day you desire your child to receive medicine at preschool or the childcare center. All forms must be signed by both you and your doctor, except in the case of the following over-the-counter medications, for which only your signature is required:
Topical ointments (like sunscreen or diaper ointment).
Non-prescription antihistamines or decongestants.
Acetaminophen or other aspirin substitutes.
Cough suppressants.
If you’re struggling with whether or not your child is too sick for preschool, come join our Parent Advisor private Facebook group to ask other parents questions to help you make this difficult choice. To learn more about parenting tips, visit our Peake Academy and Play Boutique blogs.
A good Health and Wellness policy is one of the great quality of a preschool or a childcare program. This guide will give you 10 THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN LOOKING FOR A QUALITY EARLY CHILDHOOD PROGRAM. We’ve provided several questions to ask in each category. Of course, you don’t have to ask ALL the questions we’ve suggested, but these might serve as a prompt for you to ask the things that are most important to you.
Get the FULL VERSION for FREE when you sign up to our Weekly Newsletter
We promise not to overflow your Inbox
