School and Illness: Should Your Child Stay Home when Sick? If your child shows symptoms of sickness, you need to determine whether it is safe for them to go to school or stay home. While it seems like a simple decision, if your child is sick, they shouldn’t go to school or daycare. However, if it is a sore muscle, is it practical to keep the child at home?

For working parents, this is always a difficult choice. Hence, to make it simple, here is a list of symptoms which can help you make a wise decision.

If your child has any of these, they must stay at home.

• Your child seems to be very tired and needs bed rest, especially with symptoms of flu
• Your child has diarrhea or vomiting
• Shortness of breath. If your child is wheezing
• Dry cough or an uncontrollable cough that disrupts their regular activity
• Your child has an earache, sore throat, headache, or recent injury
• Sore eyes or pink eye
• Your child breaks out in a rash. However, not all rashes require that a child stay home from school, so check with your doctor.

Among the other things that you must consider to ensure proper health for your kids, you must also consider dietary changes and exercise.

List of symptoms that mean your child must stay home

1. Fever

Any temperature of 100.4° Fahrenheit (38° Centigrade) is a fever, which means children shouldn’t go to school. Fevers are a sign of infection and compromised immunity, so it is not safe to send them to school as you cannot know if their health will get better or worse if attend school. Also, while medicines may bring the fever down, the infection may be contagious and put other children’s health at risk.

Most schools have a policy stating that a child should be fever-free for at least 24 hours before attending school. What to do if your child has a temperature of 99.9 or 100? Officially, that is not considered to be a fever. But, you might be called by the school to pick up your child if they have a temperature of 100, as it is considered to be a sign of potential fever. Hence, it is safer to keep your child home and keep an eye on them if they are showing symptoms of fever.

2. Vomiting or diarrhea

If a child is experiencing diarrhea and vomiting, they shouldn’t be sent to school. Continuous vomiting and diarrhea may also leave them dehydrated, so make sure that they drink plenty of water. The same 20–24-hour rule that applied to fever applies here as well. However, it is worth checking with your pediatrician for advice. Certain viruses can be contagious, even if it’s for an extra day. In such conditions, you don’t want to be the one responsible for an outbreak of the virus at the school.

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3. Bad body ache

If your child has a mild headache or sore muscles in the feet or hands but otherwise seems okay, it is fine to give them some medicine and send them off to school. However, if the pain is more than just mild, don’t send them to school. Pain is something you might want to keep an eye on. In such situations, you must keep them home and consult with a doctor.

4. Continuous coughing or abnormal breathing

If everyone kept their children at home during the winter months, we would witness empty schools! So, coughing as a symptom of not sending your child should be considered if:

• It is continuous, causes extreme discomfort and hampers the child’s ability to learn and play. Here, immediate treatment is required.
• Labored breathing accompanied by dry coughing is another sign that you shouldn’t ignore. This too requires immediate treatment.

If you’re unsure, call your doctor for advice, as it is better to be safe than sorry when it’s about the health of your child and other children at school.

5. Contagious Diseases

A contagious disease spreads by close contact with other people. For example, chickenpox, flu, cold, as well as hand foot and mouth disease which is prevalent nowadays in many parts of India. In this case, it is very important to ensure your child is at home.

A disease may be contagious even before the child starts showing its symptoms. This would make it very hard to prevent the spread of germs, especially in a school classroom. However, practices like washing hands from time to time and improving hygiene will prevent the spread of germs.

Conclusion

As a parent, you must remember that attending school regularly is very important for the growth and development of your child. Continuous absence from school might make it harder for them to keep up with their studies. Hence, it is important to keep a constant check on their overall health, ensure that they eat healthily and perform routine exercises, which can help strengthen their immunity.

Disclaimer – This is a Guest Post.

The post School and Illness: When Should Your Child Stay Home? appeared first on Growing With Nemit.

Hey guys! How’s the weather treating you? Is it too hot or too wet? Well, here in Delhi we are waiting for the monsoon to arrive anytime soon and get some respite from the scorching heat. To escape the ever rising temperature, we planned a short road trip to Rishikesh last month. Our 2 days stay at Shaantam Resorts & Spa was great but I can’t say the same about our road travel. Check out my recent travel posts on Instagram to know all about it. I’ve also written about how we kept that trip within our budget. Ok, this post is not about Rishikesh, it’s about the monsoon trip we took last year with our toddler.

Last year in July we planned a monsoon weekend getaway to UDAIPUR from DELHI and it was awesome. If you are looking for any nearby destinations for a quick getaway but don’t want to go to the hills do consider Udaipur.

How to reach Udaipur?

There are 3 ways to travel to Udaipur –

• By Road
• By Train
• And, By Air

I know weekend getaways are more about road trips but we wanted less travel time and more time to relax and enjoy. So we decided to take an overnight train from Delhi to Udaipur and planned our return by flight. That overnight train saved us a full day of travel. We reached Udaipur early morning and we used that day to explore the city.

If you follow my travel stories then you must be knowing that we keep our itineraries free from city travel. But, it was not possible when we were visiting a city for a vacation. So, we kept it flexible which means we made no itinerary!

The good thing was we had recommendations from our Insta Family which helped in planning our day. We had booked Amantra Shilpi Resort and had requested for an early check-in which was quick and smooth. The room was big, spacious, comfortable, had a king size bed and also a big balcony.

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The weather in Udaipur in mid-July was amazingly pleasant, it kept drizzling every now and then. Even when it was sunny, it was not that hot. Below are the 3 places we visited in Udaipur and the first 2 are highly recommended.

A Day in Udaipur with a Toddler during Monsoon

• Fateh Sagar Lake

Udaipur is famous for its big, beautiful, artificial lakes and Fateh Sagar Lake is one of them. Our driver told us about boating in the lake but we were not too interested. Boating with a toddler sounded too boring but what we saw there changed our minds. We immediately booked the tickets and waited for our turn. The lake was huge and it was not peddle boating, there were speedboats circling around the lake. Now, that sounded thrilling!

It was sunny but we could see clouds in the distance & as soon as we stepped inside the boat, it started raining. The boat driver said it’s just drizzling so we are good to go. But as we took off, it started raining heavily. This speed boat ride turned out to be one of our best experiences in Udaipur. I also made a video of our boat ride, it was crazy. Don’t miss the expression on Nemit’s face in the video.

Oh, by the way, we waited quite long in the queue to get the front seats in the boat. So, either you rush, wait or request to get the front seats which guarantee extraordinary thrill & view.

• Sajjangarh Palace

Our next stop was Sajjangarh Palace situated on the top of a hill, an hours drive from the lake. The weather was amazing, although the rain had stopped the whole city seemed to be covered under the clouds. Taking a ride to the hilltop in such weather sounded perfect. Another reason to visit this palace was its name.

Sajjangarh palace is popularly known as Monsoon palace since it was built chiefly to watch the monsoon clouds.

So, how could we not visit it and watch the clouds from the top? Nemit decided to take a nap on the way which gave us time to enjoy our couple time.

Nemit was still asleep when we reached the palace and we did a very stupid yet daring thing which I would not recommend to anyone. We trusted our driver and left Nemit with him. We told him to call us in case he wakes up or cries. He was a good man, he took care of Nemit and when he woke up, he climbed up to the top and brought him to us.

The view from the top was breathtaking, we could see the whole city from there once the clouds scattered away.

Nemit with our driver

• City Palace

After lunch, we decided to visit the City Palace. We thought walking in the rain would be fun. But we forgot to consider the walking distance and didn’t even think about the number of stairs.

So, we started with full of energy and by the time we reached the first floor of the palace we were out. We had to literally drag ourselves from one passage to the other. At one point, it felt we were lost!

Not a very great idea to take infants and toddlers with you, strollers are not allowed beyond a point. And, carrying a child up and down and through the narrow passages is just a waste of energy.

We decided to go back to the lake to relax our senses. One of my friends on Instagram had suggested a great place to hang out in the evening and that was our next stop.

Must try food joint – Vinod’s Cafe

It’s one of the open fast food cafes on the Fateh Sagar road opposite Fateh Sagar lake. They offer a variety of fast food options and are famously known for their ‘Kulhar coffee’. If you ever plan a trip to Udaipur, you can’t miss this place. It’s a heaven for food lovers. You get good food and an amazing view of the lake just across the road.

So, that’s how we spent our Day 1 in Udaipur. I’ll soon write posts on how we spent our Day 2 & Day 3 in Udaipur. I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Do share it with your friends and family.

Now, a special announcement! My blog growingwithnemit.com is turning TWO this July and to make the celebrations grand, I am hosting a #BirthdayBlogTrain along with my friend Gunjan whose blog also completed two years this June. And we both invite you to be a part of our celebrations and join our birthday linky party.

40 Bloggers – 30 Days – 5 Picture Prompts – 1 Party

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

The post Monsoon Weekend Getaway – A Day in Udaipur with a Toddler appeared first on Growing With Nemit.