YOUR CHILD'S HEALTH

 When to Keep Your Child Home

Following are guidelines for when to keep your child home from group child care or school.  You might check to see if your child's school has it's own set of stay-home guidelines.

Appearance/Behavior: Unusually tired, pale, difficult to wake, confused or irritable, with lack of appetite.  These problems are sufficient reason to exclude a child from group child care or school.

Diarrhea: Three or more watery stools in a 24-hour period, especially if your child acts or looks ill.

Ear Infection:  Your child may attend school after receiving medical treatment.  (Untreated ear infections can cause permanent hearing loss and even more serious problems.)

Eyes: Thick mucus or pus draining from the eye, or pink eye.   Your child probably can attend school immediately after starting treatment. 

Fever:  Temperature of 101 or higher and confusion, diarrhea, earache, irritability, rash, sore throat, vomiting, cough, or headache.

Lice/Scabies:  Children cannot return to child care or school until their hair has been treated with lice shampoo and the dead eggs (nits) have been completely combed out with a special comb.  Children with scabies can go to school after treatment has been started.  Click for Hair Angel Helpers form (lice check)

Rash:  Body rash, especially with fever or itching.

Sore Throat:  Especially with fever, or swollen glands in the neck.

Vomiting:  Vomiting two or more times within the past 24 hours.

Common Cold:  If your child has minor cold symptoms but does not have the symptoms described previously, he may not need to be kept home from school.   A long-term (chronic) greenish nose discharge, and/or a chronic cough are symptoms that should be seen by a doctor.

Using Common Sense:  Do not send you child to school with an illness that could spread to other students.  Do not send you child to school if he would be miserable all day, or if his presence would distract the other students.  If you have something very important coming up at work that you simply cannot miss,  make a "just in case" plan (neighbor, grandmother, or day care) in the unlikely event you child wakes up ill that morning.

Make sure your child's vaccinations are up to date.

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