Thursday, May 08, 2008

still sick

i'm still sick (the horrible allergies turned into a horrible head cold that just won't go away) but this is about a kid at work.
i actually had this kid in mind when i did a search and found that great link to an article on "how sick is too sick for kinder" in my last post. she was brought in on tuesday and her and her dad had a conversation about she would be going home at lunch time because she was a bit unwell. the main teacher tried to subtly hint that maybe the child shouldn't be there (usually she is amazing with dealing with parents but for some reason on this issue she has a hard time telling parents they need to take their child home). that didn't work and the child was left. the teacher was sure she'd had panadol. i asked the child later and she said she had (and she started fading about 20 minutes before her mom arrived at lunch). so she spent 4 hours at kinder playing with her friends, spreading her germs around. apparently she didn't come in yesterday (i didn't either). today she came in and seemed fine. i saw she was getting picked up near the end of the day. at lunch she started to fade. she looked HORRIBLE and felt hot. we took her temp and she had a fever so we called her parents (we also asked her at this point if she'd had panadol and she said she had) we helped her make up her bed (since rest time was starting anyway). she sat on her bed crying for her mom (which is REALLY unlike this child-- she would never cry for one of her parents). she then told my co-worker how to get to her house and asked if she could take her there!!! the poor kid. the first 15-20 min of rest time she sat quietly sobbing on her bed. she fell asleep 5 minutes before her dad arrived. i think he was almost just going to leave her there sleeping (which we wouldn't have let happen). he woke her up and she just crawled into his arms crying about feeling yucky. he started saying things like "you're sick again! you were fine this morning and now you're sick again! you were all better, what happened?" if his daughter hadn't been crying in his arms i would have told him we knew he'd given her panadol this morning (so obviously he knew she wasn't better) and that she needs to stay home when she's unwell because its not fair to her or anyone else. we had another child turn up sick this morning too (which i knew there was something wrong with him from the second i said hello to him). fortunately after his mom spent 20 minutes trying to pry her extra clingy child from her, she realized he was actually sick (he looked pretty pale and sickly) and took him home with her.
i showed my co-workers the article and we're gonna print it up (or a summary of it) for every parent. hopefully it'll help parents think thru what happens when they send their sick child to kinder.

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