When Should You Keep Your Child Home Sick from School? Mayo Expert Offers Tips

Whether or not to keep a sick child home from school or daycare can be a difficult decision to make, and may also depend on your childs school or daycare policies. A Mayo physician offers tips on how to decide.

Young childrens immune systems havent learned to recognize and resist most common viruses, explains Robert Key, MD, family physician at Mayo Clinic Health System in Prairie du Chien. Thats why, until theyre 8 or so, kids seem to bring home everything thats making the rounds at school. Children can typically have six to 10 colds per year.

In general, children should stay home when they dont feel well enough to participate in normal daily activities and lack sufficient alertness to learn or play, Dr. Key says.

He suggests that kids should stay home when they experience:
- Vomiting twice or more over a 24-hour period or being unable to tolerate normal food and drink, or both.
- A temperature of 101 or higher.
- Severe coughing or difficulty breathing.
- Repeated bouts of severe diarrhea for at least a day.
- Persistent abdominal pain (more than 2 hours).
- Open sores on the mouth.
- A skin rash or red eye from an undetermined cause.
- Head lice or scabies.
- Other contagious conditions such as strep throat, chicken pox, impetigo, etc.

According to Mayo Clinic, the top four infectious illnesses that keep children home from school or daycare are colds, the stomach flu, pink eye and strep throat.

If your childs illness seems to be more than just a common cold or flu, you may want to contact his or her regular health care provider to see whether the symptoms could indicate something more serious.

The single most important thing your child can do to prevent illness is to wash his or her hands thoroughly and frequently. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that people wash their hands with soap and warm water for 15 seconds -- about as long as it takes to sing the Happy Birthday song twice.

Source: Mayo Clinic