If your child has a cold, should you send her to school? Learn what cold symptoms you can send your child to school with, when to keep your sick child home, and when they can go back to school after being sick.
Symptoms that are okay for school:
There are so many cold symptoms, but it’s ok to send your child to school with a runny nose, a little sneezing, and a slight cough with instructions to always cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze and always dispose of tissues. Send her with a hand cleaner or hand sanitizer for her to keep in her bag so they can constantly clean their hands.
When your child should stay home:
He should stay home if he has have a fever, is vomiting, has crusting or yellowish discharge from his eyes, is having trouble breathing, or has a whooping kind of cough. Those are signs of something more serious, so you want to keep him home with those symptoms.
Sore throat with drooling is usually a sign of something more serious. Now sore throat with fever, if it’s a strep throat we expect them to be home for 24 hours until they’re on antibiotics for 24 hours. So two doses of penicillin and they can go back to school.
If he has impetigo, which is pustules on the skin, it should be treated for at least 24 hours with antibiotics before he can go back to school. With chicken pox, it’s usually six days until all the sores have dried and crusted. For diarrhea, it’s more than two runny stools a day because it’s going to make it difficult for him. Anything that has or involves a body rash with fever, the child should stay home unless it is absolutely determined it’s beguine by the doctor.
Now as far as coughing goes, if it’s severe with the child getting red or blue in the face, or if there’s like a whooping sound that’s associated with the coughing, he should stay home.
With persistent abdominal pain and other things like when the child is unable to perform daily tasks, he should probably stay home until he feels healthy enough to at least presume schoolwork.
As a rule, we prefer a child who has never been vaccinated to stay home until his illness has been fully investigated rather than subject other kids to any kinds of infections.
When to send your child back to school:
When your child hasn’t had fever for 24 hours, isn’t vomiting or doesn’t have other symptoms, and most import, is able to sit through school for 6 to 8 hours without discomfort.
Sandyha Katz, M.D., is board-certified in pediatric and pediatric emergency medicine. Dr. Katz is an emergency medical associate of Nyack Hospital Emergency Department in Nyack, NY.
