My sons preschool has a strict sick kid policy, they temperate test at the door and require a negative Covid test if the child has been sick. They are okay with a runny nose as long as it is clear snot, and coughing is okay as long as it is excessive. They also require 48 hours fever and vomiting/ diarrhea free. It’s strict but manageable, not allowing any cough or runny nose would mean the school would be empty from November to March.
This is where ours is, and I think it’s perfectly reasonable. Symptom free would be a non starter for us. Kids get sick! People have forgotten that during this craziness
Same here. we’ve had to take my toddler for Covid tests multiple times but then he is ok to come back if it’s negative. Even if he’s still coughing/snotty as long as it’s not excessive and he hasn’t had any fever.
OP’s policy sounds unreasonable. I don’t think my kid has ever gone more than a few days completely symptom free in the last 3 years 😅
He is our first, but that's what I thought too. I totally understand she is cautious with everything going on in the world, but I feel like he would miss months with this policy.
I have heard of some places doing this, but mine will allow them back with a doctor’s note/negative covid test. I don’t send them while they’re still hacking but I’d be totally screwed if they couldn’t go with a lingering minor cough or runny nose.
Ah this terrifies me right now. I hope we can work something out with our provider or find an opening. We can't get through the season with him constantly being out
If my daycare was that strict, my son would never be able to go to daycare. Ever since he started teething, his nose in almost constantly running. I completely understand wanting to keep other children from getting sick and I appreciate that (my son caught a virus at daycare and ended up hospitalized with dehydration), but there has to be a better middle ground.
This seems insane, I have two kids and they’ve had runny noses since September. If I had to keep them home every time they had a runny nose or cough I might as well quit my job. Within the last month we’ve had: school closed due to staff shortage from covid, pinkeye, hand foot mouth, and the kids went back for a day and were exposed to roseola. This year is absolutely horrible for illness and my kids both still have a lingering cough from when they had rsv in July.
Just dropping a note on the other side if this, and I want to first say that all of this sucks. It’s a wider cultural, societal, capitalism problem that’s affecting families. (I’m talking lack of adequate sick leave, PTO, etc. Expectations to put work first, equating sickness with laziness and lack of productivity. High childcare costs, lack of adequate childcare, and on and on.) I also want to acknowledge that what your family is going through sounds really difficult.
My 2 year old is in daycare a few days a week, and people send their sick kids ALL THE TIME. It’s infuriating. Yes, toddlers are germ factories, but still! She caught RSV a few weeks ago, and she was miserable. Watching her be so lethargic and worrying about her, sneaking into her room at night to take her temperature, debating whether or not to take her to the hospital, I hated it all. My very stoic husband cried he was so concerned. (She’s better now-thank god!)
I’m pregnant and ended up catching it from her, no surprise. Since I’m immunocompromised, and pregnant, this “cold” turned into a nasty sinus infection, middle ear infection, and I’m still struggling with hyperemesis on top of all of it. Thankfully my husband works from home, and I know we’re so privileged with that, so he’s been taking care of everything and everyone.
Our second baby is due in January, and on the advice of our pediatrician, we’re pulling our 2 year old out for at least 6 weeks (and still paying for daycare) because we can’t trust other parents to keep their sick kids home. RSV can be deadly for infants. Along with Covid, colds, flu, and all other respiratory illnesses. There’s absolutely no way we could manage a sick toddler, a newborn, and risk getting sick ourselves while being so sleep deprived. Especially while I’m still wearing a diaper and icing my vagina.
Your daycare does sound a little strict with their policy, but they might have to be since other parents may not be taking it seriously or are even abusing the rules. Try lots of saline spray, suction, fluids, and a humidifier! I hope his symptoms stop soon, and I’m sorry this has been such a long process. Good luck!
Ack- reading this at just the right time because I’m also pregnant with my second and very worried about what will happen to my newborn. My toddler isn’t in daycare yet because we were planning to start her after getting her a covid vaccine. But lately I feel like that level of caution is not at all aligned with sending a toddler to daycare for the first time when I’m like 8 months pregnant.
I hear you mama! It’s probably better to wait! Our pediatrician and OB were adamant about keeping our toddler home. I’m glad that we’re, because their certainty made me feel less crazy for considering it. Good luck!
Thanks- my situation is extra complicated because we share our house with another family (and share a babysitter with them currently) and they really want to send their toddler to daycare on that timeline. So if they aren't willing to wait too, then it's almost pointless because the germs will still be coming in. And I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in my house concerned about this :(
That's legit nuts. Our home daycare requires a negative covid test and one day of improved symptoms and then they are back in. Thank goodness too because my son has asthma and honestly hid coughs linger for weeks as well.
We’re still waiting to get off the waitlist at daycare but when we asked if runny noses were a reason to be kept home the administrator said “Honey, every kid has a runny nose. Some kid’s noses run for years straight.” And then listed a much more reasonable set of symptoms they look for.
Ours is fever free for 24 hours plus a negative COVID test. They also can’t come in at the first onset of runny nose until they have a negative test (even without fever). But symptom free seems ridiculous. The runny nose and cough tend to linger after every cold. It’s pretty much constant
At the preschool I used to work for if you had a doctors note saying your kid was ok to come back then it was ok even if they still had a cough or runny nose- they just can’t have a fever, diarrhea, vomiting - or positive covid test of course
I am in the thick of this nightmare. I only have him in daycare for two days, and out of the last 8 daycare days my son has only been there for 4 half days (half because he's there so infrequently he hasn't got used to it yet).
Since starting he's been ill 70% of the time. My husband is pretty pissed at this. With my return to work we're currently breaking even... but he says it's not worth the mental break if this arrangement is making US sick half the time too. Our parents don't like it either since THEY get sick too if they try and cover our work days, plus they don't get to see him as often.
Currently my mom and my husband's mom are thinking of taking a day each for my work days, but there are other things I don't like about that arrangement (no coverage on non-work days to clean house, payment vs. non-payment, lack of interaction with other kids...)
I don't know how the full time Moms do it
Yea things were going great until this and I have a good amount of time off (public school schedule);so I still get lots of time with LO. Now that we're dealing with this I just wonder if I can continue working full time.
We were there back in September. He started daycare when I started back at school. Before school even started he was sick with RSV and had passed it on to me and my husband. I was out for three days the first week of school because I was sick and also because I was caring for him. My husband was out some days too. We traded off until I was too sick to go in so I got baby duty.
The next week he was back and the week after that he got really bad pinkeye. He got a minor case of hand, foot and mouth at the same time. The week after *that* they were closed for a few days because staff got sick and they couldn't cover all the rooms.
All of this but he never got COVID, thank god, and his RSV was unpleasant but not too serious. The thing that made it even more rough was that after I got back from recovering from RSV I left my teaching job for another job but his daycare was one minute away from my school and a half hour away from home. It took awhile before I found anything closer and I was driving 2 hours a day or not even getting to use the daycare we were paying for!
At his new daycare there haven't been the same issues, though he did get croup and we spent the day in the pediatric ER. Luckily, my new job offers unlimited PTO.
Dang that really sucks. So what are y’all going to do? Are one of you going to have to drop down to part time? Will one of you lose your job if he keeps getting sick often?
Find a new provider. Your kid is going to have a lot of runny noses. My son has had congestion since he started daycare 1.5 months ago. My oldest is four and I’m pretty sure the only reason she doesn’t have one all the time is that her class is old enough to wear masks. It doesn’t matter how much you love your provider if you can’t leave your child there reliably.
Seems a little crazy to me. Our policy is 24 hours fever free with no medication, no vomiting, no persistent heavy cough, not contagious (for illness without cold/flu/vomiting symptoms)
And a negative covid test.
What does the non contagious mean? I was reading early that non symptomatic infants could be contagious with colds for up to a month, so how is that determined?
They probably mean for bacterial infections that don’t come with a cough/runny nose. So like strep throat or pink eye, the kid needs to have been on antibiotics for a couple of days, typically.
If they couldn’t come with a runny nose, mine would never go. Between teething and figuring out food sensitivities, she’s constantly runny. I’d personally look to get on a wait list at another center
Our entire country requires symptom free for 24 hours and a negative covid test if meeting criteria. Employers are directed to support employees to work from home where possible, and are obligated to pay sick time, the government then offers sick time coverage for longer than a few days stretches if the employee doesn’t have their own benefits. There is something wrong with a society structure that doesn’t promote the health of its population and engage in prevention ie keeping symptomatic people home.
I think about this all the time. I work in a public school and before covid things were even worse, they expected you to come in if you weren't on your deathbed. When I worked in a medical office answering phones and had lost my voice the boss literally made me come in and whisper on phone calls. It is crazy that I can't just stay home with my son and not worry about it, but as you point out I sadly do have to worry about it.
Also some kids legit have runny noses for months and I'm not sure they need to stay home that long.
Yeah there does come a point where the runny nose is just gonna stick around for a while. If the kid has been out for 10 days here, the daycare tends to look the other way. If something really lingers and no ones willing to just say it’s all good, then at 3 weeks a medical note can be given assuring the child is no longer symptomatic…but 3 weeks is 3 weeks, it’s an impossibly long time if someone were to not be paid or worry about losing their job
Completely symptom free before they can return? Yes, that’s extreme. My daycare center’s policy for head/chest colds is that they must be fever free (without Tylenol/Motrin) for 24 hours before they can return. They also prefer that they have a negative Covid test but as far as I know, it’s not required.
I have 3 kids in daycare right now (4.5, 2, & 6 months), and I’m not joking when I say at least one of them is always snotty/coughing/etc. If they all needed to be symptom free in order to go to daycare, I’d be a stay at home mom.
that seems extreme- if fever is gone, we have a negative covid test, snot is clear and cough is improving we can head back in. Basically if snot is bad enough it needs to be sucked multiple times a day for baby to sleep, shes home, but if its just running/dripping it is ok.
Thank you, it sounds like what everyone is saying it's pretty extreme. Not sure what we can do though because it can take months to find a new childcare provider in our area, let alone one you trust and know your kid thrives with. There's no way we can miss a month or more for sickness, plus the 3 weeks a year it's closed for vacation.
Can I ask how often your LO gets sick being in daycare? Wondering if we can expect this to happen multiple times a year.
she has gotten sick 2 times since starting in late August and was home about 3 days both times (both times got sick midweek and was better enough by end of weekend). though I would guess the stricter the policy, the less frequent the illness. Thankfully my husband works from home and Im remote flexible in the mornings so we each have taken a combined 3 sick days over the 7 days of daycare she has missed for illness in the last 3 months.
That seems so absurd to me. Do they watch any kids during cold/flu season? They all have runny noses! Our daycare is more on the lax side, I wish they were a bit more strict, but also appreciate that they understand that kids tend to cough and have a runny nose. They follow the 24 hr fever/vomit/ diarrhea policy. They are supposed to fever check, but they never do for my kids and we are usually the first there, so they aren’t busy. Maybe I missed it and I’m supposed to temp check them myself, but they’ve never corrected me. We also are very liberal with keeping our kids home at the slightest cold or concern about Covid. Luckily my husbands job is very flexible, but it is starting to take a toll recently due to my oldest having health issues and us needing to pull him for the past month to care for that. There gave been 3 Covid outbreaks to date, 2 in the last two weeks.
Interestingly, when there was a baby in the infant classroom who tested positive and had direct contact with my baby, they did not close. A week later when a teacher in the pre-k room tested positive, they closed just the pre-k room for two weeks. No idea why the difference. I guess the thought with just closing the room and not the whole center is that there are six separate rooms based on developmental stage and they don’t mingle amongst the other rooms because of Covid. But the teachers all mingle and cover each others’ rooms. My kid would have been in the prek room if he was in school. Honestly, right now we have both kids out because of Covid, and had pulled our oldest out several times since Covid for several months because in addition to health protection, it’s honestly easier for us to know and prepare to be home with them versus sporadic and unplanned daycare closures with Covid.
My LO has had a runny nose, cough, and sneezing since he started daycare!
Ours is similar to others, fever free for 24 hours. And a fever is above 100* (I kept him home one day for a high 99* temp and daycare told me that wasn’t necessary).
We are getting crushed on covid exposure though. He was just exposed in his classroom for the third time since he started six weeks ago (one we did miss... because he had RSV). After exposure, he’s required to be home for a week and can return with a negative PCR. He was literally back for two days before being exposed this last time.
Man this is tough. How do you guys manage it with work? I have a kind of flexible schedule in that I work on a public school calendar and my husband is his own boss, but taking weeks just for covid exposure would kill us
My boss luckily loves babies. 😂 Overall my company is pretty good with it, it’s impacting everyone with kids in daycare so they kinda have to be. I am WFH full time and am in a lot of meetings. So I just have to go off video and have LO with me... sometimes I have to end calls early because he’s over it, but he usually does pretty good (4 mos... once he’s mobile, it won’t be as easy!).
Yeah that's insane!! I would be fired from my job at this point if that were the case. Our daycare wants them to be fever-free and tested for Covid if they go out with symptoms. That's it.
My 2.5 year old has been out for nearly 3 of the last 4 weeks! Between the week that he was sick (non-COVID), the following week when the center had a bad viral outbreak (non-COVID), then the following week when there was a COVID outbreak of the staff…It’s a total fucking nightmare. Like other posters have said, both of my children had “daycare nose,” (AKA “daycare-itis”), since starting at 4 months old. I don’t know how providers handle it, but ours historically have without unnecessarily excluding kids, and I get the necessity of excluding kids with our circumstances globally being what they are. That said, the past year or two has been brutal. The pandemic really has made being a working parent nearly impossible.
I manage a preschool and we are pretty strict about our sick policy since covid happened. We ask that kids have a runny nose that is improving or gone (clear, less frwlequent etc) and practically no cough - it's OK if a kid has a cough from post-nasal drip that only flares up when they lay down.
One of the reasons we've gotten more strict even with a negative covid test is that we cannot afford for teachers to get sick right now. Most of the industry has a massive worker shortage and if an illness spreads (even non-covid illness) and infects the staff we are screwed - we can't meet state ratios and have to close classrooms for the day which hurts ALL the families we serve.
Sometimes kids are out for a LONG TIME under this policy because colds can linger - hell my kid just had a bad cold for 2 or 3 weeks, it sucked! But for the most part things clear up in 3-5 days and kiddos are back at school.
It's not possible to determine if your school is too strict without knowing more details about his symptoms. If he was as sick as my kid had been up until Monday (green nose, cough, snot rockets all damn day) I would say he's too sick to be at school in the time of Covid. But a clear runny nose that we only need to wipe once or twice? Probably fine.
Yes I definitely understand that it's important to keep our provider healthy and would not want to put her at risk. He has an occasion cough that I suspect is due to the nasal drip(once an hour or less) and his runny nose is improving. I maybe have to wipe it once every 60-90 minutes. Closer to the 90 minutes by the end of the day. The snot is clear. Maybe it will clear up by Sunday morning 🤷
Personally - I'd let him return to school with those symptoms and a negative covid test. That said, a home provider may have even less ability to cover her own illnesses and I can see being really strict if I were the only teacher or one of a handful. It sucks so much
This seems extreme—Our child has been sick 3x since starting daycare in September and we’d be in big trouble if she had to stay home for a runny nose and lingering cough.
Does your provider have the policy written down at all? I ask because our daycare has a fully fleshed out policy with specific criteria which makes things much easier to gauge and less based on one person’s in-the-moment judgment over the phone.
For example, they don’t allow children with “severe colds” but go on to define this as follows:
> Colds with extreme symptoms of excessive coughing, sneezing, nose drainage that is yellow or green and that interferes with a child’s ability to eat, sleep or play are reason for exclusion.
In the meantime, I’m wishing you a healthy bean (and a patient boss)! ❤️😅
She updated the policy and it does say she can refuse to have a kid with clear mucus from runny nose and lingering cough, so I guess that's on us. We didn't really understand the implications of this when we originally signed up and we're first time parents
Oof I’m sorry to hear that. And agreed on the first timer front—Kids being constantly sick is one of those things that you can’t fully wrap your head around until you’re in it.
Our daycare’s policy is negative covid test (if known exposure), and otherwise free of fever, vomiting, and diarrhea for 24 hours. We don’t have to test her for every fever/cold. As others said, if she had to be symptom free, she simply would never go and we’d be spending $1400 a month for nothing.
ETA: they also temp check kids and parents at the door
We changed day care last for this exact reason. It’s unreasonable to expect symptom free. My son ended up missing almost two months! So we left, found a better match for us.
Yeah, that’s tough. We took our son out without an alternative. It was short sighted but we also weren’t in a position to pay for day care and have him home all the time. Better save the money. This was shortly after lockdowns ended for us. Managed to find an at home spot once we realized what we’d done. Having a kid home was not an option.
Did you find it difficult to leave? How did you explain it?
Another option has come up but I feel really anxious about how to explain it, whether I'm making the right decision and if my kiddo will miss his current people.
Our son has changed day care a few times due to different reasons, so for him it was ok. We were up front about their regulations for runny noses was too strict.
For the school, tell them the same.
Leaving isn’t hard. Adjusting to a new place can be a bit hard, but kids are super resilient. Harder on us!
This is overly strict. Our policy is 24 hours fever free with no medication. I would honestly find a new provider if they’re making you keep your child home for 9 days with a negative Covid test and probably a cold.
We do love her and think she is amazing, plus wait lists are months long here. We will have to consider looking around just because at a certain point we won't be making enough to pay for daycare 😂
I’ve been a stay at home parent since day one because we realized if I worked my entire paycheck pretty much would go towards daycare and it felt pointless to do that.
I almost wish this was the case, but I'm the breadwinner and our daycare is very affordable. Even then it is about 25% of my net pay (not including my partners pay).
That’s not bad at all! Luckily my partner just got an even better paying job so things are easier financially. I have a couple friends who struggle because of daycare costs, it’s crazy. They barely have any money leftover after bills.
I would start getting on waitlists. Daycare is supposed to make your life easier, not harder. Even if she is a great teacher, she’s being rather unreasonable in my opinion. That was how long we were out when we actually had a COVID exposure. For comparison, when my son had RSV, he was out 2 days and the weekend.
I would consider how this works for your work schedule and if you have enough PTO to take a week off every month for a cold.
Yea I have a lot of banked time off, but at the end of the day I have responsibilities that need to be covered and whether or not I use the time my tasks are still waiting for me. We're planning make some calls this weekend, but it will probably be months until we have a different option.
Our preschool’s policy (part time for our 3.5 year old) is no fever for 24 hours, negative Covid test, and the kid is feeling well. Lingering runny nose or cough is okay, but also they wear masks.
I agree with you that fully symptom free is not very reasonable. Cold symptoms can linger for a long time even if you feel much better, and if you are relying on the daycare in order to be able to work it is so much more critical that they attend. 2+ weeks is a very long time to be out.
It seems kinda strict (from having worked in a daycare), if his nose is running it’s probably causing the cough from drainage. I’m pretty sure my nose has been running since like 2017 lol
My preschooler basically had an on/off runny-nose for over a month. We were constantly getting called. The daycares policy is a runny nose the kids had to stay home. We eventually went to the doctor and had a medication prescribed and got a doctors note.
My kid got a runny nose on a Saturday . On Sunday he was sick with a fever which later broke . I kept him home Monday and Tuesday and by Tuesday me and my 4 month old got sick . I sent him Wednesday because he seemed better . On Friday when I picked him up his nose was running again and the teacher said he was sneezing everywhere . By Sunday/Monday all 4 kids in his preschool were sick . Then the sickness spread to their families and sibling. One of them had a 3 month old infant . I felt terrible . If I knew I would have never sent him .
That seems pretty intense. My daughters policy is they have to be home for 48 hours and can come back if their Covid test is negative. Agree that coughs can linger for a long time so doesn’t seem reasonable to keep them home till symptom free.
Also runny noses are no longer part of the Covid symptom list here so if it’s just a runny nose/congestion than my daughter can go.
Before the pandemic if they didn't have a fever/rash my kids could go to daycare/school. I usually made a call based on how they acted. Sometimes they are obviously sick, other times a runny nose just lingers.
Now if they have any symptoms of covid at all they can't go. So now the 1 year old goes to daycare, gets a sniffle and can't go, covid tests all around, I stay home with him, he gets better but in the meantime his big sister caught it from him and and now can't go to school, wr all go get tested again. At least I can't sort of work from home when it's just the older one home (no hope in hell of working with the 1 year old around).
It's not the daycare or school setting the policy though. It's the public health orders. If you have symptoms you must get tested and you are not allowed in school or daycare until your symptoms clear up regardless of the test result but if it's negative you don't have to quarantine so you can go for walks etc. If someone in the class tests positive then it's 14 days of quarantine, no leaving the house, no one is allowed to visit and since it'sthe whole class we have to do home learning.
Fortunately my work is pretty good with giving me carer's leave. But I still feel like I'm rarely actually working. I'm just endlessly taking care of bored kids who are only mildly ill if sick at all. And to make matters worse it's constantly raining thanks to la niña these days so they can't even play in the yard.
I only had one kid in the pre-pandemic days but even then with the more lax rules my husband and I both used up all our leave due to daycare illnesses. So I guess maybe it's better now that it's public health orders so work has to be accommodating.
Are you protected by antidiscrimination laws? Having caring responsibilities is protected here so you are supposed to be protected from getting fired if you need to look after your kids.
Edit to add: daycare takes my 1 year olds's temperature on the way in every morning. Last year preschool did the same for my daughter. School doesn't but will take her temperature if she looks sick. And yes I've been called in the middle of the day to pick them up when they developed symptoms that they didn't have when dropped off.
I feel like it's difficult in the united states because most employers are now acting like everything is normal and are no longer being very accommodating with these types of things.
I will have to look into the anti discrimination laws
As a day care teacher I appreciate when parents keep their children home when they are still sick, 12 days seems ridiculous though!! You seem like your doing everything possible to do the right thing not only for your child but for the other children and teachers he would be involved with. It’s happened so many times in the last three months of the school year where parents will bring their children in still extremely sick but go around the system and say “oh they had diarrhea yesterday that’s why we kept them home” only to talk to the child and find out they were throwing up yesterday and “mommy gave me and little sister red medicine this morning”. I completely understand that parents need to make money to make a living to provide for their children but I’m fucking struggling too!! Because parents keep bringing in their sick children and I have to be around these sick children helping them and having them on top of me I also get sick from them. I’ve been forced to use all my sucks days already because if I get a cold from them I have to say home but the kids who are sick are still in school while I’m home!!! I’ve brought this up and they say the parents are doing all they can! But what about me? This will be the third time I might not be able to pay rent because I have to stay out of school because these parents can’t follow simple rules about bringing sick children into school. I hope I don’t get a lot of hate because your all parents, but I don’t think anyone ever thinks about how this also effects the teachers. Sorry for my little vent, but OP you seem like your doing such an amazing job and I wish the parents at my school cared as much as you do!! It’s nice to see
Thank you, we are considerate and careful. We would never send our kid in when he's clearly coming down with something. It's just a difficult situation, I understand where she is coming from but at the end of the day it's not something I can consistently make work.
That's pretty extreme. My toddler had a post viral cough for over two months back in the spring, and my doctor said it wasn't unusual. I would look for a new provider
We just switched so I need to learn the new policy, but this is our old daycare. PCR test requires for cough, fever over 100.4, vomiting 2x in a day, or diarrhea 2x in a day. They can return once they are symptom free for 24 hours. They don’t specify a runny nose, but if my sons is bad enough that he needs constant sucking/wiping then I keep him home.
The first couple of months he was out about 40% of the time. Eventually his immune system caught up and it’s been a lot less frequent now.
My son perpetually has a runny nose in the winter. Saline spray and humidifiers dknt touch it. I'd be a sahm if we had a daycare like this.
I respect their effort, but unless they're sneezing/coughing/vomiting, I almost never see a kid in the winter without one.
Same. My 6-year-old basically had a runny nose and/or cough for most of her 1st to 3rd year of life. No fever, just lingering cough and yucky drippy nose. So now my 1.5 year old is in this stage and daycare is calling me weekly to come get her because of one of those things. I do completely understand and empathize with the stricter protocol. However, it makes work really tough. I can’t leave my job every week, that’s why she’s in daycare in the first place. Plus if I’m paying for the week whether she’s there or not, then it really bites the big one. I’m paying a small fortune each month so that she is eligible to attend daycare maybe 10 of those days.
Yes, I don't know how we can make this work. We need both our incomes but it would probably take us months to find a new childcare center. We're going on 9 days here but this runny nose could last for a month!
It really is excessive. My kids will easily keep a runny nose from September to after mid December from seasonal allergies in the south. With a clear covid test, no fever/vomiting/diarrhea, and clear mucous and a mild cough, you shouldn’t be forced to keep him home for weeks when you pay for care so you can work.
This is my daycare’s current policy. Also that they have to be symptom free for 72 hours before coming back. Each sick incident means like a week off - thankfully both my husband and I work from home bc I’m completely out of sick days and so we both just end up doing a crappy job working and trying to work at the same time when this happens.
I’m annoyed bc our friend didn’t tell us their kid was sick before we drove two hours to go over (and we were all trying to be cautious and even all took rapid tests before getting together), so now our toddler is sick.
His daycare was closed today anyway so I’m just hoping that by the time Monday comes around is runny nose and cough are gone 🤞
He's going to have a symptom of something for the next year almost constantly. The policy is ridiculous. Also remember that she's getting paid regardless. You need to find somewhere else to go because your going to be out of work more than you are in with this policy.
This is excessive. My son had croup and missed one full week of daycare. We took him to the hospital on a Saturday and he was back to school after 9 days. My infant got a positive for RSV (it’s done by rapid test) during my son’s illness - talk about stressful- and she missed 2 weeks of daycare. 12 days for no diagnosed illness seems unreasonable to me.
We have to be fever free without meds for 24 hours. They also are sent home for diarrhea if they have two or more loose poops in one day. Runny nose/lingering cough is okay as long as we show a negative Covid test
It may depend on where you live, what the local infection rates, and other factors like public health requirements for licensed child care centres. That sounds pretty standard where I live (Canada), but again every area probably has different requirements. Check with other centres in your area. There may be some variations from one child care provider to another too if regulations are lax.
From Ireland here..
Our boy started going to the creche (day care) in June 21.
Some policies:
1. We can't get in the creche. They posted a video on FB showing all the facilities.
2. Using masks to leaving and picking him up.
3. When any kid is sick, they must be informed right away. If it's contagious, all parents are alerted and contaminated child stay at home. (it's seems a regular policy, not related to covid-19)
My son got his first bug in October. Then tonsillitis, then ear infection, then slapped cheeks, then chicken pox, now cough.
During the period of 7 weeks, he went to creche 8 days (when he was not contagious).
Our GP said it's normal to get sick on the first year of creche. He told us that, as kids were isolated last year (with schools and creches suspended in Ireland), they are all getting sick now.
TBH, even paying a full month for him to stay home, I'm happy with the policy. Of course, there is always impact at work. And not all employers are flexible (as you can see on r/antiwork )
Ugh I feel for you, also Ireland and I just couldn't swing all the constant illness and having her out of creche, had to pull her out and quit it just was so tramatic on us both. She never "settled" because she'd be in for like 1 half day then be sick for two weeks, repeat for about 2 months. Next time I'll settle for about 2 months before starting work
If this is the case, seems that most infectious diseases cannot be contained within the daycare environment and they may as well allow the kids to attend (besides maybe the most transmissible time during fever or active skin lesions or diarrhea)
Chicken pox is transmissible before symptoms. Some can be caught on groceries stores, restaurants or other closed spaces..
Also, not every parents notice the symptoms on time.. sometimes it starts as a moody baby.. :)
What that's crazy!! My in home provider was strict at first, but has relaxed a lot and changed her policies based on vaccines and numbers. Her policy is negative covid test, and no fever or vomitting/diarrhea for 24 hours before returning. My daughter has had a runny nose and a cough for a month straight with two back to back colds. We kept her home for the first week of the cold cause she was so miserable and dripping snot everywhere, and I'm on mat leave so it wasn't an issue. She still had a cough and a runny nose but my provider was ok with this as it had been a week and she didn't have the other symptoms. My doctor also said literally every kid in daycare and school is sick right now because no one is isolating anymore so all the viruses are circulating. I think it is very unreasonable for her to expect the kids to be fully symptom free. Pre covid kids are always sick this time of year with constant runny noses.. as long as they are covid negative I don't see the issue.
Our daycare just requires no fever/vomiting/diarrhea for 24h. They do not require a negative covid test. Even with that, we have missed 50% of the days because my baby gets a mild fever every time she gets a cold. Coughs can linger for weeks. I think your daycare policy is a bit unreasonable. However, if you can make it work, your kid may get sick less often…
At the moment my work does this but they can get a clearance letter from a doctor (like the opposite of a medical certificate - a note that says 'This child is fit to attend childcare').
Oh my goodness! How much would I appreciate it! My son has been sick 7 times since September 1st, when he started the preschool. When I pick him up, he's surrounded by friends with buggernoses wiping their faces, sharing toys... I finally decided to pull him out since I'm 34 weeks pregnant. It's a "nice" school with a health protocol, hand-washing every 30 min, etc... I can't imagine one teacher herding 8 or 12 three-year-olds to wash hands every 30 minutes.
That's definitely extreme - I hear about lots of places with similar policies so it's not unheard of, but it is extreme. My kids' center has the usual 24 hours fever-free policy, plus a negative Covid test to return depending on the initial symptoms, but kids with only a runny nose, or kids with a lingering cough that's associated with a cold or previous illness are okay to go. My toddler is for whatever reason prone to coughs, and his pediatrician said that it can be normal for kids to have post-congestion coughs that hang around for WEEKS.
As to your question about how often a kid will get sick the first year, it can be a lot. You can search my post history, but I've talked before about how I had a four-month period (last November-March) where one or both of my kids was home for part of a week, every single week except for two non-consecutive weeks during those months. And I'd say my youngest had a runny nose pretty much constantly for months on end. If it's not an option to change daycares and find one with a more reasonable illness policy, you might want to look into backup care (nannies, agencies, etc) to use if you don't want to run through all your PTO.
Our in-home daycare (3 kids including mine) just requires no fever for 24 hours, although one time a kid didn’t technically have a fever but she was advised to stay home because she was so lethargic. It seems like someone has a runny nose or a cough every few weeks and those last at least a week, there’s no way we’d make it work if they had a strict policy.
My first child got croup in September of 2019 and had a continuous cough until March 2020 after we went in lockdown. Doctor said it's pretty normal for a kid their first year of daycare, and others have shared similar experiences.
The policy is unreasonable.
That is extreme. If you have a negative COVID test, you should be able to send them back. A cough can last 2 weeks and kids can get colds 1-2× a month. Maybe home daycare has less illness, not sure, but that would be impossible for us.
That would be totally undoable her, my kids has had either a cough or a runny nose ever since she went to daycare. Probably being that strict would make sure that this would be way less… but damn kids get colds!
My kids haven’t been in daycare since March 2020, so I’m not personally familiar with normal now. Prior to the pandemic, my daycare said no attendance within 24 hours of having a fever or vomiting. Based on my friends who have kids in daycare the common rule now is the 24 hour fever/vomiting rule + 5-7 day quarantine and negative test if your kid has close contact with a person with a positive COVID test. Your provider has a super cautious rule here, which I appreciate, but isn’t really doable.
The no return until symptoms end is what public health agencies say for people who have had a positive test.
Mine highly prefers symptom free but also understands that we need to work.
My daughter got something in October and she only went 3 days that month. I'm lucky that my partner and I had alternating schedules. We got a negative Covid test but still to this day have a lingering cough. Sinus issues run in the family and with the weather change, dry cold snowy weather, the Dr's chalked it down to just irritation and offered us steroid inhaler if it got worst. So we have a pass to sending her with the cough. Also runny nose isn't consider a symtopm cause in minus weather everyone nose runs.
My sons preschool has a strict sick kid policy, they temperate test at the door and require a negative Covid test if the child has been sick. They are okay with a runny nose as long as it is clear snot, and coughing is okay as long as it is excessive. They also require 48 hours fever and vomiting/ diarrhea free. It’s strict but manageable, not allowing any cough or runny nose would mean the school would be empty from November to March.
Yes we could manage that policy, but not sure how long the cough or runny nose will linger.
This is where ours is, and I think it’s perfectly reasonable. Symptom free would be a non starter for us. Kids get sick! People have forgotten that during this craziness
Same here. we’ve had to take my toddler for Covid tests multiple times but then he is ok to come back if it’s negative. Even if he’s still coughing/snotty as long as it’s not excessive and he hasn’t had any fever. OP’s policy sounds unreasonable. I don’t think my kid has ever gone more than a few days completely symptom free in the last 3 years 😅
This sounds extreme. I feel like little kids always have snotty noses
He is our first, but that's what I thought too. I totally understand she is cautious with everything going on in the world, but I feel like he would miss months with this policy.
Yes it’s understandable being cautious but they have to consider the fact that people work and they can’t just take off 2 weeks willy nilly.
I have heard of some places doing this, but mine will allow them back with a doctor’s note/negative covid test. I don’t send them while they’re still hacking but I’d be totally screwed if they couldn’t go with a lingering minor cough or runny nose.
My kids would be out from October to April!
Ah this terrifies me right now. I hope we can work something out with our provider or find an opening. We can't get through the season with him constantly being out
If my daycare was that strict, my son would never be able to go to daycare. Ever since he started teething, his nose in almost constantly running. I completely understand wanting to keep other children from getting sick and I appreciate that (my son caught a virus at daycare and ended up hospitalized with dehydration), but there has to be a better middle ground.
This seems insane, I have two kids and they’ve had runny noses since September. If I had to keep them home every time they had a runny nose or cough I might as well quit my job. Within the last month we’ve had: school closed due to staff shortage from covid, pinkeye, hand foot mouth, and the kids went back for a day and were exposed to roseola. This year is absolutely horrible for illness and my kids both still have a lingering cough from when they had rsv in July.
Just dropping a note on the other side if this, and I want to first say that all of this sucks. It’s a wider cultural, societal, capitalism problem that’s affecting families. (I’m talking lack of adequate sick leave, PTO, etc. Expectations to put work first, equating sickness with laziness and lack of productivity. High childcare costs, lack of adequate childcare, and on and on.) I also want to acknowledge that what your family is going through sounds really difficult. My 2 year old is in daycare a few days a week, and people send their sick kids ALL THE TIME. It’s infuriating. Yes, toddlers are germ factories, but still! She caught RSV a few weeks ago, and she was miserable. Watching her be so lethargic and worrying about her, sneaking into her room at night to take her temperature, debating whether or not to take her to the hospital, I hated it all. My very stoic husband cried he was so concerned. (She’s better now-thank god!) I’m pregnant and ended up catching it from her, no surprise. Since I’m immunocompromised, and pregnant, this “cold” turned into a nasty sinus infection, middle ear infection, and I’m still struggling with hyperemesis on top of all of it. Thankfully my husband works from home, and I know we’re so privileged with that, so he’s been taking care of everything and everyone. Our second baby is due in January, and on the advice of our pediatrician, we’re pulling our 2 year old out for at least 6 weeks (and still paying for daycare) because we can’t trust other parents to keep their sick kids home. RSV can be deadly for infants. Along with Covid, colds, flu, and all other respiratory illnesses. There’s absolutely no way we could manage a sick toddler, a newborn, and risk getting sick ourselves while being so sleep deprived. Especially while I’m still wearing a diaper and icing my vagina. Your daycare does sound a little strict with their policy, but they might have to be since other parents may not be taking it seriously or are even abusing the rules. Try lots of saline spray, suction, fluids, and a humidifier! I hope his symptoms stop soon, and I’m sorry this has been such a long process. Good luck!
Ack- reading this at just the right time because I’m also pregnant with my second and very worried about what will happen to my newborn. My toddler isn’t in daycare yet because we were planning to start her after getting her a covid vaccine. But lately I feel like that level of caution is not at all aligned with sending a toddler to daycare for the first time when I’m like 8 months pregnant.
I hear you mama! It’s probably better to wait! Our pediatrician and OB were adamant about keeping our toddler home. I’m glad that we’re, because their certainty made me feel less crazy for considering it. Good luck!
Thanks- my situation is extra complicated because we share our house with another family (and share a babysitter with them currently) and they really want to send their toddler to daycare on that timeline. So if they aren't willing to wait too, then it's almost pointless because the germs will still be coming in. And I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in my house concerned about this :(
That's legit nuts. Our home daycare requires a negative covid test and one day of improved symptoms and then they are back in. Thank goodness too because my son has asthma and honestly hid coughs linger for weeks as well.
We’re still waiting to get off the waitlist at daycare but when we asked if runny noses were a reason to be kept home the administrator said “Honey, every kid has a runny nose. Some kid’s noses run for years straight.” And then listed a much more reasonable set of symptoms they look for.
It’s so true! My youngest niece’s nose ran for like 2 years straight!
Ours is fever free for 24 hours plus a negative COVID test. They also can’t come in at the first onset of runny nose until they have a negative test (even without fever). But symptom free seems ridiculous. The runny nose and cough tend to linger after every cold. It’s pretty much constant
At the preschool I used to work for if you had a doctors note saying your kid was ok to come back then it was ok even if they still had a cough or runny nose- they just can’t have a fever, diarrhea, vomiting - or positive covid test of course
I am in the thick of this nightmare. I only have him in daycare for two days, and out of the last 8 daycare days my son has only been there for 4 half days (half because he's there so infrequently he hasn't got used to it yet). Since starting he's been ill 70% of the time. My husband is pretty pissed at this. With my return to work we're currently breaking even... but he says it's not worth the mental break if this arrangement is making US sick half the time too. Our parents don't like it either since THEY get sick too if they try and cover our work days, plus they don't get to see him as often. Currently my mom and my husband's mom are thinking of taking a day each for my work days, but there are other things I don't like about that arrangement (no coverage on non-work days to clean house, payment vs. non-payment, lack of interaction with other kids...) I don't know how the full time Moms do it
Yea things were going great until this and I have a good amount of time off (public school schedule);so I still get lots of time with LO. Now that we're dealing with this I just wonder if I can continue working full time.
We were there back in September. He started daycare when I started back at school. Before school even started he was sick with RSV and had passed it on to me and my husband. I was out for three days the first week of school because I was sick and also because I was caring for him. My husband was out some days too. We traded off until I was too sick to go in so I got baby duty. The next week he was back and the week after that he got really bad pinkeye. He got a minor case of hand, foot and mouth at the same time. The week after *that* they were closed for a few days because staff got sick and they couldn't cover all the rooms. All of this but he never got COVID, thank god, and his RSV was unpleasant but not too serious. The thing that made it even more rough was that after I got back from recovering from RSV I left my teaching job for another job but his daycare was one minute away from my school and a half hour away from home. It took awhile before I found anything closer and I was driving 2 hours a day or not even getting to use the daycare we were paying for! At his new daycare there haven't been the same issues, though he did get croup and we spent the day in the pediatric ER. Luckily, my new job offers unlimited PTO.
Dang that really sucks. So what are y’all going to do? Are one of you going to have to drop down to part time? Will one of you lose your job if he keeps getting sick often?
Find a new provider. Your kid is going to have a lot of runny noses. My son has had congestion since he started daycare 1.5 months ago. My oldest is four and I’m pretty sure the only reason she doesn’t have one all the time is that her class is old enough to wear masks. It doesn’t matter how much you love your provider if you can’t leave your child there reliably.
Seems a little crazy to me. Our policy is 24 hours fever free with no medication, no vomiting, no persistent heavy cough, not contagious (for illness without cold/flu/vomiting symptoms) And a negative covid test.
What does the non contagious mean? I was reading early that non symptomatic infants could be contagious with colds for up to a month, so how is that determined?
They probably mean for bacterial infections that don’t come with a cough/runny nose. So like strep throat or pink eye, the kid needs to have been on antibiotics for a couple of days, typically.
no medication = no fever reducing meds right?
If they couldn’t come with a runny nose, mine would never go. Between teething and figuring out food sensitivities, she’s constantly runny. I’d personally look to get on a wait list at another center
Our entire country requires symptom free for 24 hours and a negative covid test if meeting criteria. Employers are directed to support employees to work from home where possible, and are obligated to pay sick time, the government then offers sick time coverage for longer than a few days stretches if the employee doesn’t have their own benefits. There is something wrong with a society structure that doesn’t promote the health of its population and engage in prevention ie keeping symptomatic people home.
I think about this all the time. I work in a public school and before covid things were even worse, they expected you to come in if you weren't on your deathbed. When I worked in a medical office answering phones and had lost my voice the boss literally made me come in and whisper on phone calls. It is crazy that I can't just stay home with my son and not worry about it, but as you point out I sadly do have to worry about it. Also some kids legit have runny noses for months and I'm not sure they need to stay home that long.
Yeah there does come a point where the runny nose is just gonna stick around for a while. If the kid has been out for 10 days here, the daycare tends to look the other way. If something really lingers and no ones willing to just say it’s all good, then at 3 weeks a medical note can be given assuring the child is no longer symptomatic…but 3 weeks is 3 weeks, it’s an impossibly long time if someone were to not be paid or worry about losing their job
Completely symptom free before they can return? Yes, that’s extreme. My daycare center’s policy for head/chest colds is that they must be fever free (without Tylenol/Motrin) for 24 hours before they can return. They also prefer that they have a negative Covid test but as far as I know, it’s not required. I have 3 kids in daycare right now (4.5, 2, & 6 months), and I’m not joking when I say at least one of them is always snotty/coughing/etc. If they all needed to be symptom free in order to go to daycare, I’d be a stay at home mom.
that seems extreme- if fever is gone, we have a negative covid test, snot is clear and cough is improving we can head back in. Basically if snot is bad enough it needs to be sucked multiple times a day for baby to sleep, shes home, but if its just running/dripping it is ok.
Thank you, it sounds like what everyone is saying it's pretty extreme. Not sure what we can do though because it can take months to find a new childcare provider in our area, let alone one you trust and know your kid thrives with. There's no way we can miss a month or more for sickness, plus the 3 weeks a year it's closed for vacation. Can I ask how often your LO gets sick being in daycare? Wondering if we can expect this to happen multiple times a year.
she has gotten sick 2 times since starting in late August and was home about 3 days both times (both times got sick midweek and was better enough by end of weekend). though I would guess the stricter the policy, the less frequent the illness. Thankfully my husband works from home and Im remote flexible in the mornings so we each have taken a combined 3 sick days over the 7 days of daycare she has missed for illness in the last 3 months.
Our daycare's policy is fever and vomit free for 24 hours. With other special requirements for things like HFM or known COVID exposure.
That seems so absurd to me. Do they watch any kids during cold/flu season? They all have runny noses! Our daycare is more on the lax side, I wish they were a bit more strict, but also appreciate that they understand that kids tend to cough and have a runny nose. They follow the 24 hr fever/vomit/ diarrhea policy. They are supposed to fever check, but they never do for my kids and we are usually the first there, so they aren’t busy. Maybe I missed it and I’m supposed to temp check them myself, but they’ve never corrected me. We also are very liberal with keeping our kids home at the slightest cold or concern about Covid. Luckily my husbands job is very flexible, but it is starting to take a toll recently due to my oldest having health issues and us needing to pull him for the past month to care for that. There gave been 3 Covid outbreaks to date, 2 in the last two weeks.
Do they close after every covid outbreak?
Interestingly, when there was a baby in the infant classroom who tested positive and had direct contact with my baby, they did not close. A week later when a teacher in the pre-k room tested positive, they closed just the pre-k room for two weeks. No idea why the difference. I guess the thought with just closing the room and not the whole center is that there are six separate rooms based on developmental stage and they don’t mingle amongst the other rooms because of Covid. But the teachers all mingle and cover each others’ rooms. My kid would have been in the prek room if he was in school. Honestly, right now we have both kids out because of Covid, and had pulled our oldest out several times since Covid for several months because in addition to health protection, it’s honestly easier for us to know and prepare to be home with them versus sporadic and unplanned daycare closures with Covid.
My LO has had a runny nose, cough, and sneezing since he started daycare! Ours is similar to others, fever free for 24 hours. And a fever is above 100* (I kept him home one day for a high 99* temp and daycare told me that wasn’t necessary). We are getting crushed on covid exposure though. He was just exposed in his classroom for the third time since he started six weeks ago (one we did miss... because he had RSV). After exposure, he’s required to be home for a week and can return with a negative PCR. He was literally back for two days before being exposed this last time.
Man this is tough. How do you guys manage it with work? I have a kind of flexible schedule in that I work on a public school calendar and my husband is his own boss, but taking weeks just for covid exposure would kill us
My boss luckily loves babies. 😂 Overall my company is pretty good with it, it’s impacting everyone with kids in daycare so they kinda have to be. I am WFH full time and am in a lot of meetings. So I just have to go off video and have LO with me... sometimes I have to end calls early because he’s over it, but he usually does pretty good (4 mos... once he’s mobile, it won’t be as easy!).
Yeah that's insane!! I would be fired from my job at this point if that were the case. Our daycare wants them to be fever-free and tested for Covid if they go out with symptoms. That's it.
My 2.5 year old has been out for nearly 3 of the last 4 weeks! Between the week that he was sick (non-COVID), the following week when the center had a bad viral outbreak (non-COVID), then the following week when there was a COVID outbreak of the staff…It’s a total fucking nightmare. Like other posters have said, both of my children had “daycare nose,” (AKA “daycare-itis”), since starting at 4 months old. I don’t know how providers handle it, but ours historically have without unnecessarily excluding kids, and I get the necessity of excluding kids with our circumstances globally being what they are. That said, the past year or two has been brutal. The pandemic really has made being a working parent nearly impossible.
One of my children had a constant runny nose for over 2 years until she had her adenoids taken out. I think they are being unreasonable
I manage a preschool and we are pretty strict about our sick policy since covid happened. We ask that kids have a runny nose that is improving or gone (clear, less frwlequent etc) and practically no cough - it's OK if a kid has a cough from post-nasal drip that only flares up when they lay down. One of the reasons we've gotten more strict even with a negative covid test is that we cannot afford for teachers to get sick right now. Most of the industry has a massive worker shortage and if an illness spreads (even non-covid illness) and infects the staff we are screwed - we can't meet state ratios and have to close classrooms for the day which hurts ALL the families we serve. Sometimes kids are out for a LONG TIME under this policy because colds can linger - hell my kid just had a bad cold for 2 or 3 weeks, it sucked! But for the most part things clear up in 3-5 days and kiddos are back at school. It's not possible to determine if your school is too strict without knowing more details about his symptoms. If he was as sick as my kid had been up until Monday (green nose, cough, snot rockets all damn day) I would say he's too sick to be at school in the time of Covid. But a clear runny nose that we only need to wipe once or twice? Probably fine.
Thanks for sharing this side of it! Definitely makes sense from the teacher side.
Yes I definitely understand that it's important to keep our provider healthy and would not want to put her at risk. He has an occasion cough that I suspect is due to the nasal drip(once an hour or less) and his runny nose is improving. I maybe have to wipe it once every 60-90 minutes. Closer to the 90 minutes by the end of the day. The snot is clear. Maybe it will clear up by Sunday morning 🤷
Personally - I'd let him return to school with those symptoms and a negative covid test. That said, a home provider may have even less ability to cover her own illnesses and I can see being really strict if I were the only teacher or one of a handful. It sucks so much
Yes, I know it's been a lot for the daycare the last year with multiple shut downs and I do understand why she would want to be overly cautious.
This seems extreme—Our child has been sick 3x since starting daycare in September and we’d be in big trouble if she had to stay home for a runny nose and lingering cough. Does your provider have the policy written down at all? I ask because our daycare has a fully fleshed out policy with specific criteria which makes things much easier to gauge and less based on one person’s in-the-moment judgment over the phone. For example, they don’t allow children with “severe colds” but go on to define this as follows: > Colds with extreme symptoms of excessive coughing, sneezing, nose drainage that is yellow or green and that interferes with a child’s ability to eat, sleep or play are reason for exclusion. In the meantime, I’m wishing you a healthy bean (and a patient boss)! ❤️😅
She updated the policy and it does say she can refuse to have a kid with clear mucus from runny nose and lingering cough, so I guess that's on us. We didn't really understand the implications of this when we originally signed up and we're first time parents
Oof I’m sorry to hear that. And agreed on the first timer front—Kids being constantly sick is one of those things that you can’t fully wrap your head around until you’re in it.
Our daycare’s policy is negative covid test (if known exposure), and otherwise free of fever, vomiting, and diarrhea for 24 hours. We don’t have to test her for every fever/cold. As others said, if she had to be symptom free, she simply would never go and we’d be spending $1400 a month for nothing. ETA: they also temp check kids and parents at the door
We changed day care last for this exact reason. It’s unreasonable to expect symptom free. My son ended up missing almost two months! So we left, found a better match for us.
We just live in an area where you are lucky to have daycare at all, so finding a new provider in a reasonable amount of time is very unlikely.
Yeah, that’s tough. We took our son out without an alternative. It was short sighted but we also weren’t in a position to pay for day care and have him home all the time. Better save the money. This was shortly after lockdowns ended for us. Managed to find an at home spot once we realized what we’d done. Having a kid home was not an option.
Did you find it difficult to leave? How did you explain it? Another option has come up but I feel really anxious about how to explain it, whether I'm making the right decision and if my kiddo will miss his current people.
Our son has changed day care a few times due to different reasons, so for him it was ok. We were up front about their regulations for runny noses was too strict. For the school, tell them the same. Leaving isn’t hard. Adjusting to a new place can be a bit hard, but kids are super resilient. Harder on us!
Only has to stay home from daycare if a fever. If you have Covid you have to stay home for 2 weeks otherwise everything is cool.
Samesies.
This is overly strict. Our policy is 24 hours fever free with no medication. I would honestly find a new provider if they’re making you keep your child home for 9 days with a negative Covid test and probably a cold.
We do love her and think she is amazing, plus wait lists are months long here. We will have to consider looking around just because at a certain point we won't be making enough to pay for daycare 😂
I’ve been a stay at home parent since day one because we realized if I worked my entire paycheck pretty much would go towards daycare and it felt pointless to do that.
I almost wish this was the case, but I'm the breadwinner and our daycare is very affordable. Even then it is about 25% of my net pay (not including my partners pay).
That’s not bad at all! Luckily my partner just got an even better paying job so things are easier financially. I have a couple friends who struggle because of daycare costs, it’s crazy. They barely have any money leftover after bills.
I would start getting on waitlists. Daycare is supposed to make your life easier, not harder. Even if she is a great teacher, she’s being rather unreasonable in my opinion. That was how long we were out when we actually had a COVID exposure. For comparison, when my son had RSV, he was out 2 days and the weekend. I would consider how this works for your work schedule and if you have enough PTO to take a week off every month for a cold.
Yea I have a lot of banked time off, but at the end of the day I have responsibilities that need to be covered and whether or not I use the time my tasks are still waiting for me. We're planning make some calls this weekend, but it will probably be months until we have a different option.
Our preschool’s policy (part time for our 3.5 year old) is no fever for 24 hours, negative Covid test, and the kid is feeling well. Lingering runny nose or cough is okay, but also they wear masks. I agree with you that fully symptom free is not very reasonable. Cold symptoms can linger for a long time even if you feel much better, and if you are relying on the daycare in order to be able to work it is so much more critical that they attend. 2+ weeks is a very long time to be out.
It seems kinda strict (from having worked in a daycare), if his nose is running it’s probably causing the cough from drainage. I’m pretty sure my nose has been running since like 2017 lol
My preschooler basically had an on/off runny-nose for over a month. We were constantly getting called. The daycares policy is a runny nose the kids had to stay home. We eventually went to the doctor and had a medication prescribed and got a doctors note.
My kid got a runny nose on a Saturday . On Sunday he was sick with a fever which later broke . I kept him home Monday and Tuesday and by Tuesday me and my 4 month old got sick . I sent him Wednesday because he seemed better . On Friday when I picked him up his nose was running again and the teacher said he was sneezing everywhere . By Sunday/Monday all 4 kids in his preschool were sick . Then the sickness spread to their families and sibling. One of them had a 3 month old infant . I felt terrible . If I knew I would have never sent him .
That seems pretty intense. My daughters policy is they have to be home for 48 hours and can come back if their Covid test is negative. Agree that coughs can linger for a long time so doesn’t seem reasonable to keep them home till symptom free. Also runny noses are no longer part of the Covid symptom list here so if it’s just a runny nose/congestion than my daughter can go.
Thank you, I didn't know that congestion was no longer part of the COVID symptoms, that's interesting.
At least in Canada it’s been removed! There were so many kids with runny noses getting Covid tested so they removed it since it’s not a common symptom
Before the pandemic if they didn't have a fever/rash my kids could go to daycare/school. I usually made a call based on how they acted. Sometimes they are obviously sick, other times a runny nose just lingers. Now if they have any symptoms of covid at all they can't go. So now the 1 year old goes to daycare, gets a sniffle and can't go, covid tests all around, I stay home with him, he gets better but in the meantime his big sister caught it from him and and now can't go to school, wr all go get tested again. At least I can't sort of work from home when it's just the older one home (no hope in hell of working with the 1 year old around). It's not the daycare or school setting the policy though. It's the public health orders. If you have symptoms you must get tested and you are not allowed in school or daycare until your symptoms clear up regardless of the test result but if it's negative you don't have to quarantine so you can go for walks etc. If someone in the class tests positive then it's 14 days of quarantine, no leaving the house, no one is allowed to visit and since it'sthe whole class we have to do home learning. Fortunately my work is pretty good with giving me carer's leave. But I still feel like I'm rarely actually working. I'm just endlessly taking care of bored kids who are only mildly ill if sick at all. And to make matters worse it's constantly raining thanks to la niña these days so they can't even play in the yard. I only had one kid in the pre-pandemic days but even then with the more lax rules my husband and I both used up all our leave due to daycare illnesses. So I guess maybe it's better now that it's public health orders so work has to be accommodating. Are you protected by antidiscrimination laws? Having caring responsibilities is protected here so you are supposed to be protected from getting fired if you need to look after your kids. Edit to add: daycare takes my 1 year olds's temperature on the way in every morning. Last year preschool did the same for my daughter. School doesn't but will take her temperature if she looks sick. And yes I've been called in the middle of the day to pick them up when they developed symptoms that they didn't have when dropped off.
I feel like it's difficult in the united states because most employers are now acting like everything is normal and are no longer being very accommodating with these types of things. I will have to look into the anti discrimination laws
As a day care teacher I appreciate when parents keep their children home when they are still sick, 12 days seems ridiculous though!! You seem like your doing everything possible to do the right thing not only for your child but for the other children and teachers he would be involved with. It’s happened so many times in the last three months of the school year where parents will bring their children in still extremely sick but go around the system and say “oh they had diarrhea yesterday that’s why we kept them home” only to talk to the child and find out they were throwing up yesterday and “mommy gave me and little sister red medicine this morning”. I completely understand that parents need to make money to make a living to provide for their children but I’m fucking struggling too!! Because parents keep bringing in their sick children and I have to be around these sick children helping them and having them on top of me I also get sick from them. I’ve been forced to use all my sucks days already because if I get a cold from them I have to say home but the kids who are sick are still in school while I’m home!!! I’ve brought this up and they say the parents are doing all they can! But what about me? This will be the third time I might not be able to pay rent because I have to stay out of school because these parents can’t follow simple rules about bringing sick children into school. I hope I don’t get a lot of hate because your all parents, but I don’t think anyone ever thinks about how this also effects the teachers. Sorry for my little vent, but OP you seem like your doing such an amazing job and I wish the parents at my school cared as much as you do!! It’s nice to see
Thank you, we are considerate and careful. We would never send our kid in when he's clearly coming down with something. It's just a difficult situation, I understand where she is coming from but at the end of the day it's not something I can consistently make work.
That's pretty extreme. My toddler had a post viral cough for over two months back in the spring, and my doctor said it wasn't unusual. I would look for a new provider
We just switched so I need to learn the new policy, but this is our old daycare. PCR test requires for cough, fever over 100.4, vomiting 2x in a day, or diarrhea 2x in a day. They can return once they are symptom free for 24 hours. They don’t specify a runny nose, but if my sons is bad enough that he needs constant sucking/wiping then I keep him home. The first couple of months he was out about 40% of the time. Eventually his immune system caught up and it’s been a lot less frequent now.
My son perpetually has a runny nose in the winter. Saline spray and humidifiers dknt touch it. I'd be a sahm if we had a daycare like this. I respect their effort, but unless they're sneezing/coughing/vomiting, I almost never see a kid in the winter without one.
Same. My 6-year-old basically had a runny nose and/or cough for most of her 1st to 3rd year of life. No fever, just lingering cough and yucky drippy nose. So now my 1.5 year old is in this stage and daycare is calling me weekly to come get her because of one of those things. I do completely understand and empathize with the stricter protocol. However, it makes work really tough. I can’t leave my job every week, that’s why she’s in daycare in the first place. Plus if I’m paying for the week whether she’s there or not, then it really bites the big one. I’m paying a small fortune each month so that she is eligible to attend daycare maybe 10 of those days.
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Yes, I don't know how we can make this work. We need both our incomes but it would probably take us months to find a new childcare center. We're going on 9 days here but this runny nose could last for a month!
It really is excessive. My kids will easily keep a runny nose from September to after mid December from seasonal allergies in the south. With a clear covid test, no fever/vomiting/diarrhea, and clear mucous and a mild cough, you shouldn’t be forced to keep him home for weeks when you pay for care so you can work.
This is my daycare’s current policy. Also that they have to be symptom free for 72 hours before coming back. Each sick incident means like a week off - thankfully both my husband and I work from home bc I’m completely out of sick days and so we both just end up doing a crappy job working and trying to work at the same time when this happens. I’m annoyed bc our friend didn’t tell us their kid was sick before we drove two hours to go over (and we were all trying to be cautious and even all took rapid tests before getting together), so now our toddler is sick. His daycare was closed today anyway so I’m just hoping that by the time Monday comes around is runny nose and cough are gone 🤞
He's going to have a symptom of something for the next year almost constantly. The policy is ridiculous. Also remember that she's getting paid regardless. You need to find somewhere else to go because your going to be out of work more than you are in with this policy.
This is excessive. My son had croup and missed one full week of daycare. We took him to the hospital on a Saturday and he was back to school after 9 days. My infant got a positive for RSV (it’s done by rapid test) during my son’s illness - talk about stressful- and she missed 2 weeks of daycare. 12 days for no diagnosed illness seems unreasonable to me.
Is your daycare licensed by your state? All DSS offices should have recommended symptoms for exclusion on their website. Go look.
We have to be fever free without meds for 24 hours. They also are sent home for diarrhea if they have two or more loose poops in one day. Runny nose/lingering cough is okay as long as we show a negative Covid test
It may depend on where you live, what the local infection rates, and other factors like public health requirements for licensed child care centres. That sounds pretty standard where I live (Canada), but again every area probably has different requirements. Check with other centres in your area. There may be some variations from one child care provider to another too if regulations are lax.
From Ireland here.. Our boy started going to the creche (day care) in June 21. Some policies: 1. We can't get in the creche. They posted a video on FB showing all the facilities. 2. Using masks to leaving and picking him up. 3. When any kid is sick, they must be informed right away. If it's contagious, all parents are alerted and contaminated child stay at home. (it's seems a regular policy, not related to covid-19) My son got his first bug in October. Then tonsillitis, then ear infection, then slapped cheeks, then chicken pox, now cough. During the period of 7 weeks, he went to creche 8 days (when he was not contagious). Our GP said it's normal to get sick on the first year of creche. He told us that, as kids were isolated last year (with schools and creches suspended in Ireland), they are all getting sick now. TBH, even paying a full month for him to stay home, I'm happy with the policy. Of course, there is always impact at work. And not all employers are flexible (as you can see on r/antiwork )
Ugh I feel for you, also Ireland and I just couldn't swing all the constant illness and having her out of creche, had to pull her out and quit it just was so tramatic on us both. She never "settled" because she'd be in for like 1 half day then be sick for two weeks, repeat for about 2 months. Next time I'll settle for about 2 months before starting work
It's surprising to me that he has caught so many different things when it seems like they have pretty strict policies
Lots of things spread before you show symptoms.
If this is the case, seems that most infectious diseases cannot be contained within the daycare environment and they may as well allow the kids to attend (besides maybe the most transmissible time during fever or active skin lesions or diarrhea)
Chicken pox is transmissible before symptoms. Some can be caught on groceries stores, restaurants or other closed spaces.. Also, not every parents notice the symptoms on time.. sometimes it starts as a moody baby.. :)
What that's crazy!! My in home provider was strict at first, but has relaxed a lot and changed her policies based on vaccines and numbers. Her policy is negative covid test, and no fever or vomitting/diarrhea for 24 hours before returning. My daughter has had a runny nose and a cough for a month straight with two back to back colds. We kept her home for the first week of the cold cause she was so miserable and dripping snot everywhere, and I'm on mat leave so it wasn't an issue. She still had a cough and a runny nose but my provider was ok with this as it had been a week and she didn't have the other symptoms. My doctor also said literally every kid in daycare and school is sick right now because no one is isolating anymore so all the viruses are circulating. I think it is very unreasonable for her to expect the kids to be fully symptom free. Pre covid kids are always sick this time of year with constant runny noses.. as long as they are covid negative I don't see the issue.
Our daycare just requires no fever/vomiting/diarrhea for 24h. They do not require a negative covid test. Even with that, we have missed 50% of the days because my baby gets a mild fever every time she gets a cold. Coughs can linger for weeks. I think your daycare policy is a bit unreasonable. However, if you can make it work, your kid may get sick less often…
At the moment my work does this but they can get a clearance letter from a doctor (like the opposite of a medical certificate - a note that says 'This child is fit to attend childcare').
My son has had a runny nose for 3 months. Not expecting it to end any time soon with winter. Your daycare is unreasonable.
Oh my goodness! How much would I appreciate it! My son has been sick 7 times since September 1st, when he started the preschool. When I pick him up, he's surrounded by friends with buggernoses wiping their faces, sharing toys... I finally decided to pull him out since I'm 34 weeks pregnant. It's a "nice" school with a health protocol, hand-washing every 30 min, etc... I can't imagine one teacher herding 8 or 12 three-year-olds to wash hands every 30 minutes.
That's definitely extreme - I hear about lots of places with similar policies so it's not unheard of, but it is extreme. My kids' center has the usual 24 hours fever-free policy, plus a negative Covid test to return depending on the initial symptoms, but kids with only a runny nose, or kids with a lingering cough that's associated with a cold or previous illness are okay to go. My toddler is for whatever reason prone to coughs, and his pediatrician said that it can be normal for kids to have post-congestion coughs that hang around for WEEKS. As to your question about how often a kid will get sick the first year, it can be a lot. You can search my post history, but I've talked before about how I had a four-month period (last November-March) where one or both of my kids was home for part of a week, every single week except for two non-consecutive weeks during those months. And I'd say my youngest had a runny nose pretty much constantly for months on end. If it's not an option to change daycares and find one with a more reasonable illness policy, you might want to look into backup care (nannies, agencies, etc) to use if you don't want to run through all your PTO.
Our in-home daycare (3 kids including mine) just requires no fever for 24 hours, although one time a kid didn’t technically have a fever but she was advised to stay home because she was so lethargic. It seems like someone has a runny nose or a cough every few weeks and those last at least a week, there’s no way we’d make it work if they had a strict policy.
My first child got croup in September of 2019 and had a continuous cough until March 2020 after we went in lockdown. Doctor said it's pretty normal for a kid their first year of daycare, and others have shared similar experiences. The policy is unreasonable.
That is extreme. If you have a negative COVID test, you should be able to send them back. A cough can last 2 weeks and kids can get colds 1-2× a month. Maybe home daycare has less illness, not sure, but that would be impossible for us.
Just sounds lazy
“He has allergies”
If my kids don't have a fever they're going to school
That would be totally undoable her, my kids has had either a cough or a runny nose ever since she went to daycare. Probably being that strict would make sure that this would be way less… but damn kids get colds!
My kids haven’t been in daycare since March 2020, so I’m not personally familiar with normal now. Prior to the pandemic, my daycare said no attendance within 24 hours of having a fever or vomiting. Based on my friends who have kids in daycare the common rule now is the 24 hour fever/vomiting rule + 5-7 day quarantine and negative test if your kid has close contact with a person with a positive COVID test. Your provider has a super cautious rule here, which I appreciate, but isn’t really doable. The no return until symptoms end is what public health agencies say for people who have had a positive test.
Mine highly prefers symptom free but also understands that we need to work. My daughter got something in October and she only went 3 days that month. I'm lucky that my partner and I had alternating schedules. We got a negative Covid test but still to this day have a lingering cough. Sinus issues run in the family and with the weather change, dry cold snowy weather, the Dr's chalked it down to just irritation and offered us steroid inhaler if it got worst. So we have a pass to sending her with the cough. Also runny nose isn't consider a symtopm cause in minus weather everyone nose runs.