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When Should Kids Take a Sick Day From School?

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Stock photo of a young girl lying in bed with a teddy bear. An adult is feeling the child's forehead and has a thermometer in the other hand.
A sick child resting in bed. Courtesy of Alexis Scholtz/peopleimages.com via Adobe Stock.

It’s important to make sure that our children don’t fall ill too often during the year. Prior to the start of the 2024-25 school year, we interviewed Dr. Andrew Ellston from Ellston Pediatrics, in New York City, about when kids should take a sick day from school and ways to prevent the spread of illness in the classroom. Here is his advice for parents:

How long after recovery should children [wait before going] back to school?
Along with following the rules of the concerned school district, I think it’s really important to focus on how the child is actually feeling. A child needs to feel well enough. It is also important to ensure that the child is not vomiting, does not have diarrhea and has been off fever suppressing medicine for at least 24 hours before returning to school and resuming a normal routine.

Stock photo of a boy sneezing into a tissue in a classroom.
A boy sneezing in a classroom. Courtesy of Pat Tozher via Adobe Stock.

What efforts can parents make to stop the spread of illness in school settings?
I think it’s really simple. If you don’t want other children to come to school actively sick, to ensure that your child does not fall sick, then you don’t want to send your child to school when they’re actively sick with a contagious illness.

Can you briefly describe some specific measures to help prevent the spread of illness among children?
To begin with, it’s important to stay up to date with vaccines. In addition to routine vaccinations, one must ensure that flu and COVID vaccines are up to date. It’s especially important to teach children to cough into their arms, encourage hand washing between eating or drinking and facilitate masking during illnesses.

From your personal experience as a practicing doctor, can you specify a time of the year when children seem to get most sick?
Most of the illnesses surge after vacations, as that’s when everybody travels and children get exposed to a lot of people. Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) infections surge in the late fall and winter, flu surges in December and COVID surges in the summer.

Can you give us some examples of contagious illnesses that children might catch at school?
Aside from cold, flu and the ongoing COVID-19 virus, kids can also catch a lot of stomach viruses such as the norovirus. All kids catch the hand, [foot] and mouth disease at least once, and it’s important to remember that this is contagious for a bit longer, generally till the bulk of the rash lasts. If a child is over 3 years [old], they’re also prone to [catching] strep throat if it is going around.

What age group is most susceptible to contagious illnesses at school?
The younger your child is, the more susceptible they are to contagious illnesses, as the immune system has not learned very much.

What measures can teachers and educators take to curb the spread of illness in the classroom?
It’s important for educators to recognize that we’re all in this together, and it’s essential to maintain the mindset of trying to help each other out. Kids get sick a lot, and the average 3- or 4-year-old child gets at least eight to 10 colds a year, along with other illnesses such as stomach viruses. Thus, incorporating certain basic practices into the classroom environment such as hand washing, hand sanitizing and regular vaccinations is important to protect all the children in a classroom.

When at school, kids tend to visit the classroom, playground and lunchroom the most. Can you share separate measures that can be taken in all these individual locations to prevent the spread of contagious illnesses?
For the classroom, I think it’s very important to make a sink with soap and sanitizer accessible within close vicinity for children to use. It’s also essential to have several bottles of hand sanitizer at easy disposal. In the lunchroom, it’s important for the food to be nutritious and for kids to avoid sharing food or utensils. This rule must be followed in the playground as well, where kids must be taught and asked to sanitize their hands after playing with shared toys. As a general suggestion for all locations, especially in the face of COVID-19, I want to emphasize the importance of air filtration to prevent the spread of the virus. Thus, classrooms must have their windows open and be extremely well ventilated. T

Dr. Andrew Ellston is a board-certified pediatrician known for providing personalized and expert care in New York City homes. He completed his pediatric residency at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital and has been on the “Super Doctors and Rising Stars of New York City Pediatricians” list by the New York Times for seven consecutive years (2017-2024).

The post When Should Kids Take a Sick Day From School? appeared first on Chesapeake Family.


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