Healthy Kids....Healthy Environment!

As we embrace a change of season, wave goodbye to daylight savings, enjoy the cooler nights and prepare for the winter months we must also embrace the onset of cold and flu season. As ever this highlights the big dilemma for parents – when is my child too sick to come to Kindy?

I acknowledge that this is a huge issue for parents as I faced it myself when my girls were young. You have work commitments to meet, no one to look after your sick child, acknowledge (to your inner self) that they are not well BUT nor or they THAT sick, or simply beaten down by the wail “BUT I WANT TO GO TO KINDY!!!

The reality is it’s important that you take a bigger view of the picture. Sending a child to Kindy who is not well only serves to pass the illness on to other children and staff and causes illness to linger because children are constantly cross infecting each other. If staff are ill it also upsets a child’s already fragile temperament because “their” teacher is not there and that causes the upset and tears that are not the way to start anyone’s day.

This is especially so for children who are at Kindy for the first time. Staying Healthy in Childcare (5th edition) points out that infections are common in children and often lead to illness. At home, children are reasonably well protected from infectious illness because they do not come into contact with many people – at Kindy they do! The way that children interact in our setting means that diseases can spread quickly in a variety of ways. Children of this age still put things in their mouths, the ability to wipe their noses and cover sneezes is still developing and in spite of reminders they are still not that great at remembering to wash their hands!!

Obviously we have health and hygiene procedures in place to counter this but we cannot guarantee an environment that is 100% hygienic and sterile 100% of the time.

The other point here is that sometimes a dose of prevention in the form of a “day off” has many benefits and should be top of your agenda. Most workplaces these days are very flexible about working from home and often this strategy can result in only one day off instead of a week when they get really sick! So please consider this when your child presents as unwell.

As a slightly left of centre view on this I have included a link to the Mamamia website which may make you laugh. I certainly had a chuckle. AND remember- we always know when you have given your child Panadol to get them through the day and haven’t felt that it was necessary to share this information with us!!!

http://www.mamamia.com.au/10-ways-to-drop-your-sick-kid-at-child-care/

Also here is another good one to end this blog......