When to and When Not to Keep Kids Home

Many parents find themselves in a strange situation when they wake up in the morning and find their child has a runny nose, or that he or she sneezes or coughs. While these might seem like the symptoms of the common cold or the flu, some of them send their kids to school that day nonetheless, as they say that missing out on education is unacceptable. Unfortunately, in some cases, doctors feel the same way, and even though concerned parents bring their offspring in, the physicians send them to attend classes.

But the potential that these youngsters have to infect others with all types of cold viruses is very large, epidemiologists say. The children should be kept at home if their heads hurt badly, if they are vomiting, or if they are just miserable and unfit to attend class. By making them stay at school for an entire day when their health is affected they could get really sick, and would eventually miss out on a lot of other classes and school-days, as infections grow in intensity and finally fade away.

Health experts say that the various viruses making up the “cold” family are extremely dangerous in schools because the risk of contamination is the highest not when healthy children are in the same room with sick ones, but mostly when they touch each other or when healthy kids pick up objects with which sick ones have played before. According to various studies, this is the fastest way of getting the disease, as viral particles still linger on these objects for a long time after the child suffering from the common cold has left.

On the other hand, pathogens such as the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) can give the false impression that it still remains in the organism, even after weeks of treatment. However, parents of children diagnosed with this infection should know that RSV has the nasty habit of affecting the lining of the lungs upon its entry into the host body, which can make the kid cough for weeks, even though no trace of the actual virus remains.