Illness Policy
When to Keep a Sick Child Home
When to Keep a Sick Child Home
Since their immune systems are still developing, young children are frequently sick, and it is sometimes hard to know when to send them to day care and when to keep them home. Below are some general guidelines, but it is not always clear-cut and we will need to consider individual situations, so if you aren’t sure if your child should come, please contact me so that we can talk about it.
Children should not come to day care if any of the following are true:
- Your child requires more care than we can adequately provide for them while still caring for all of the other children.
- Your child is unable to participate in our usual day care activities.
- Your child has an oral temperature of 100.4 degrees or higher. Before returning, children should be fever –free for 24 hours, without the use of fever-reducing medication.
- Your child has diarrhea (two loose or watery stools). If their stools contain blood or mucous they definitely should not come. They should have no loose stools for 24 hours before returning to day care.
- Your child is vomiting. There should be no vomiting for 24 hours before returning to day care. If your child is vomiting due to motion-sickness, gastrointestinal reflux, or for some reason other than a probable illness it may be okay for them to come to day care.
- Your child has a rash accompanied with itching, fever, or a change in behavior. They should not return until a doctor has determined that it is not contagious.
- It seems likely that your child has a contagious harmful disease such as influenza, whooping cough, measles, meningitis, chicken pox, etc. None of us want to be exposed to those things, and we should be especially mindful that some of our youngest day care children have not yet been able to receive all of their immunizations.
- Your child has a contagious nuisance condition that isn’t dangerous, but is time-consuming to get rid of, such as lice or pinworms. Once they have been treated they can return.