Surprisingly, it’s not when your child is showing symptoms of something contagious like a cold or pink eye that you should keep them home from school, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Your day care center or elementary school may very well not be up to date on new guidelines (a majority aren’t) but pediatricians are clear – once a child is showing symptoms of an illness they are usually past the point of being contagious. Kids, and adults, usually spread contagion long before they show any symptoms.
A new survey, published online in Pediatrics, found that 57% of 307 day care center directors surveyed would have sent kids home for symptoms that medical guidelines say are not harmful to the health of other children. That includes cold symptoms, pinkeye (conjunctivitis), mild stomach upsets and diarrhea, mild fever with no other symptoms and even ringworm of the scalp, which is a fungal infection.
“There’s a lot of phobia regarding pinkeye and colds,” which isn’t justified, study lead author Andrew Hashikawa, a pediatrician at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee told US News. “A lot of these illnesses spread before there are symptoms.”
So when SHOULD you keep your child home sick?
The AAP suggests these three litmus tests:
1. Does the child’s illness keep him or her from comfortably taking part in activities?
2. Does the sick child need more care than the staff can give without affecting the health and safety of other children?
If the answer to either of the first two questions is yes, better keep junior home. These two are pretty easy to determine, it’s the third that’s tricky.
3. Could other children get sick from being near your child?
According to the AAP guidelines, children should be considered contagious if they have an oral fever of 101 degrees or more or they have one of a long list of contagious diseases like measles, mups and chickenpox. Children with strep throat should stay home for 24 hours after they’ve started antibiotics. You can find the whole like at the AAP’s website www.healthychildcare.org.
