When do you send your kid back to school?

[AdinaL]

So, beyond the school guidelines ( here it is fever and vomit free for 24 hours) when do you send your kid back to school after they have been sick? Do you wait until symptoms are gone? Greatly reduced? What are your schools guidelines?

I tend to wait on classes until most symptoms have passed and she can do whatever activity comfortably.

[Vancouver Mommy]

We recently had norovirus and the literature says that a person remains contagious for 48-72 hours after symptoms are completely gone. We kept dd home well after she was feeling better.
 

[AdinaL]

Wow! I didn't know that. Good info!

[LaughingHyena]

School policy here is 48 hours sickness and diarrhoea free, though it seems people send their kids back a lot sooner.

For me I'd rather keep them off till they are fully over it and caught up on sleep than send them back early and have a recurrence. I tend to find it they go back too early then they spend a few days feeling tired and not quite right.

[mamazee]

The policy here is 24 hours free of fever/vomiting/etc., but I expect her to be feeling well too. If she's still exhausted from having been sick, I'd keep her home another day.

[Sunshyn74]

Our school policy is 24-hour fever/vomit free.

I usually follow this, but would keep them home another day if they really weren't feeling well yet.

This being said, my kids are sick quite often. I just received a truancy letter for oldest DD (age 11, 5th grade). She has missed 12 days. All excused. 3 for braces/ortho issues. 9 for various fever or vomit issues. I always call or write a letter. They excused the absences but still notified the truancy officer per school policy. I don't have a dr note for most of the absences as we only go to the dr if the fever lasts longer than 3 days.

[Quinalla]

My DD is in daycare still (preschool technically now I guess), but the policy is 24 hours of no fever/vomiting. I always do at least the policy (unless it was a special case illness that is contagious after symptoms in which case I would follow the longer amount of time) and then I occasionally add extra if she still seems to need to recover longer, especially if it is already close to the weekend or something, I'm not going to take her back for half a day on Friday for example. Most folks at our daycare seem to be pretty good about keeping their kids home when they are sick, so that's nice, and the center enforces the policy too to limit sicknesses.

[Peony]

24 hours after stomach issues. Colds when they no longer feel miserable or the cough has greatly decreased. DD2 ends up home a lot more because she has severe asthma and tends to get very ill with minor colds so if she even just seems off to me, I will often keep her home to rest up. I just called DD1 in for 4 days straight which is rare for her but we had half the family down with a stomach bug and the other half with a cold so the germs where flying everywhere. 

[One_Girl]

I follow the school policy but I do let her have ibuprofen to get through the day if she feels a little down still. She usually wants to get back since she has to stay at her grandma's Tv free home when she is sick.

[meemee]

our school definitely has a vomit free policy, but not a fever free one. dd has gone to school with a 100 degrees temp. and the school had said yes - send her in with low grade if she is feeling well.

fever has no real effect on dd. she gets sick mostly from a bad cough. 

[AdinaL]

Interesting.  All the schools here have a fever free for 24 hours policy.  Interesting how different districts do it.

On the topic - only slightly more skeevy(to me anyway)....what is your school's lice policy?  I'm honestly not sure what ours is - I've heard everything from no live bugs, only nits, to none of either.

[mamazee]

At our school, the lice just have to "be treated." No definition for "be treated" but I assume they expect people to use horrible chemicals. I used olive oil and picked out a trillion nits, but that took me a while so she did end up missing a day.

[One_Girl]

Our school says nit free for lice. That can take two treatments though with chemicals and good combing.

[AdinaL]

And don't they have to be a bit apart? The treatments?

[meemee]

aaaaaargh. nit free is our school policy. 

which is crazy. 

dd missed the most no. of school days ever due to their nit policy. 

dd has superfine hair so even the finest comb does not really help. we had to get what was it a 100 watt bulb to be able to see the stray nits. and manual labour. 

it almost seems like k and first is the time for lice. the whole class got it over a period of time. it spared no child except for a couple of boys. many got it multiple times. 

the first time i didnt know better and used the chemicals. the second time we did the cling wrap smothering method. for us the chemicals and all the other work put into it was just - work. i kept finding new infestation. the cling wrap worked better for us with hardly any manual labor. 

[One_Girl]

I used the chemicals and I believe they say a week apart but I did it in the middle then a few days after that again to make sure it got all of them. I think because the eggs hatch after a week bit I wanted to catch any hatching early in case they laid more. It was a nightmare week.

[mkksmom]

24 hours fever vomit free here, and that's what I follow unless she is feeling really rotten. I hate it honestly and would rather keep her home, but they are pretty strict here and only excuse days with a doctors note. I keep my preschooler home much longer than my older dd. However, my older dd doesn't get as sick either. Mostly just colds.

[AdinaL]

Sounds like the keeping home policies are all pretty similar.

The no nits one is brutal. That would be a lot of work!!

[phathui5]

Quote:

but they are pretty strict here and only excuse days with a doctors note.

Those sorts of policies really bug me. Not all families can afford to go to a doctor's appointment to get a sick day note. Even if the kids have state insurance, there can be issues with transportation, getting an appointment that day, etc.

[Peony]

No nits is the policy here. I will be honest and say that when DD1 had lice, we didn't inform the school.  It was over a 4 day weekend and I discovered it the day that school got out. We spent the entire break killing the buggers but it took well over a week to be completely nit free. She has very, very thick, long hair the same color as the nits and it was hours upon hours of picking them out manually one by one to get every single nit. She had a serious infestation. They don't do lice checks at her school though. Despite my best efforts, she would up with them again probably 6 weeks later over Thanksgiving break, this case was mild and I was able to quickly get rid of it.