You Don't Clean Well Enough, Dealing With Colds

[daycare]

So these past two weeks DCKs have been dropping like flies with cold/cough/green snot viruses.

I clean the daycare daily and increase the cleaning daily when the children have colds like this.

Today I make a sick call dck has green snotty nose, fever of 100.9 and coughing.
Parent says I want the child to come back tomorrow and I remind them that they can't for a full 24 hours without the aid of medication. Parent argues and I go on to tell them that many of the kids have been out sick and everyone seems to be getting including yours truly. Sorry kid needs to be picked up and needs to stay home tomorrow.

Dcp then says well then you are not cleaning good enough if they are all getting it from each other. Ugh. At this point I'm annoyed. I tell the parent that there is no way I can exclude for the common cold unless it prohibits me from meeting the needs of all of the children or if the colds prohibits me from being able to keep a clean environment I won't exclude. I do clean common areas more during this time as well as take extra precautions to increase hand washing.

Parent in an angry tone agrees to come get her daughter. I'm trying to prepare myself for a discussion and could use some of your knowledge to help back me here.

Not sure what else I can say???? Ugh. Thanks for your help

[dingledine]

I would say yep, it is hard to not get sick when children seem to cough right in my face, and each others as well. Bummer. I've said similar. I would also point to my policy on cleaning, which I send each parent on sign up.

[sharlan]

Please let me know if you find a way to stop it.

I had this problem last year. I bleached my house from floor to ceiling every night. I bleached the toys that the toddlers touched every single night. I Lysol'd every single thing that got touched in my house twice a day (light switches, phones, computers, door handles, fridge handle, remotes). I made every single person walking through my front door wash their hands and use hand sanitizer on top of that. The kids and I spent half our days washing hands.

I did that for weeks, the darn colds went through every single person in my house, and most of my daycare families.

I finally gave up and the colds ran their course.

[daycare]

yeah I have not found anything that works either. Last year it was so bad that I decided to rent a hotel room for the night after a deep clean with bleach and shampoo the carpets.

I am frustrated, because I just sent out my illness policy reminder, yet I am still getting parents coming at me in this way. UGH.......and of course it's allergies or teething......................so they say

[Cradle2crayons]

During cold and flu season I give every parent a handout stating the following::::

IT'S COLD AND FLU SEASON!!

Just a reminder to all of my daycare families, during this common time of the year for the common cold and the flu, I need to remind all parents of my illness policies::

First, It's against state licensing laws to care for a child that has a condition that excludes them from care. Please reference the enclosed illness policy for those conditions.

Secondly, every child is different and while one child does not meet exclusion criteria with a cold, that doesn't mean another one won't. My exclusion policies are based on SYMPTOMS and not just diagnosis.

Thirdly, if your child is sent home due to an illness, they can NOT return to care for 24 hours AFTER the reason for exclusion is gone (such as fever, lethargy, etc) WITHOUT the need for medications to control the symptoms for exclusion. This means if they are sent home today with a fever, they can NOT return to care tomorrow. This is NOT negotiable.

Lastly, colds and flu etc are not contracted only at daycare. They can be caught at the grocery store, from an older sibling in school who may not even be showing symptoms or from another relative. While I clean my house thoroughly and all children and adults frequently wash their hands, it's impossible to completely prevent the spread of germs. This is why my illness policy is NOT negotiable.

As a final reminder, giving your child fever reducing medications and sending them to daycare is against my policies and is grounds for immediate termination due to the health and safety of everyone involved.

I appreciate your understanding in this situation and remember!! Hand washing is the best prevention to prevent the spread of colds and the flu!!!!

Sincerely,
Me

Then I attach my illness policy and an information sheet on the flu and where to get the flu and pneumonia shot etc.

[Cradle2crayons]

And I use odoban to clean everything, mop, etc.

We rarely get colds here and I have two under two years old.... And a two and three year old that have terrible personal hygiene. And two of us with asthma.

[TwinKristi]

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/pdf/freeresources/updated/everyday_preventive.pdf

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/pdf/freeresources/updated/cleaning_disinfecting_schools.pdf

That's something you may want to print out with a friendly reminder of your dick policy. It states right there prevention comes from exclusion! It may not prevent the one you have, but the universal adoption of that policy over time will! Explain that little Susie may have gotten the cold from anyone or anywhere but obviously it's going around daycare too and while you can't exclude for every sniffle and sneeze (which she should appreciate) once there's a fever and other symptoms you have to to prevent it from spreading to everyone else as well. This rule applied to everyone in your daycare to prevent their child from getting sick as well. You clean just like any other person does to prevent illness in this setting but you can't win them all when children go to the store, the library, the Dr's office, the park... They all have germs too!! You do what you can but you can't win them all.

Eta- https://www.akronchildrens.org/cms/t...commoncold.pdf

This is a good one and says exclusion should be based on the child and if they require more than the normal amount of care rather than excluding a child simply for having a cold which doesn't prevent the spread or duration. So when a child needs to be excluded its because they need more care than you're able to provide when they're ill.

[Scout]

I might get flamed but, I don't clean with bleach for the common cold. I find that each time we have a nasty virus pass through, such as norovirus, it is AFTER I bleach all the toys that everyone gets a cold. If they all have the same thing and it's a cold I let it work its way out. I can not bleach each day, I would have no time for anything else and I believe in building up the immune system! At the end of the week I will bleach the doorknobs, light switches, remotes, front of cable boxes, etc...but, not all the toys. Last time I did that it took me over 9 hours!

[Cradle2crayons]

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/pdf/freeresou...preventive.pdf

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/pdf/freeresources/updated/cleaning_disinfecting_schools.pdf

That's something you may want to print out with a friendly reminder of your dick policy. It states right there prevention comes from exclusion! It may not prevent the one you have, but the universal adoption of that policy over time will! Explain that little Susie may have gotten the cold from anyone or anywhere but obviously it's going around daycare too and while you can't exclude for every sniffle and sneeze (which she should appreciate) once there's a fever and other symptoms you have to to prevent it from spreading to everyone else as well. This rule applied to everyone in your daycare to prevent their child from getting sick as well. You clean just like any other person does to prevent illness in this setting but you can't win them all when children go to the store, the library, the Dr's office, the park... They all have germs too!! You do what you can but you can't win them all.

Even our family doctor tells us if we don't HAVE to come in during this time of the year, DO NOT COME IN. We even schedule refills on mine and daughters medications (we go every 3 months) around flu season. My respiratory status isn't as good as hers and when I get bronchitis, I require some stiff treatment compared to some.

Even exposed to these walking germs, I still don't get sick as often as most.

[Unregistered]

you can clean til the cows come home but everyone will still get sick
I had a child cough in my face as I was putting her in the high chair and I can feel the droplets of that cough go in my eyes and mouth.
the next day I started to get a sore throat and got really sick the day after that
germs are spread through casual contact
hand washing and cleaning are good and we do it all day too but I am down to 4 today when I usually have 10

[coolconfidentme]

We were just talking about this today. My kids never got sick like I see kids today. More people have allergies & asthma too. I feel we are cleaning to much. The immune system cannot fight off germs if we don't give some level of exposure to it.

Bring back mud pies & throw away the forever baby wipes!

[daycare]

We were just talking about this today. My kids never got sick like I see kids today. More people have allergies & asthma too. I feel we are cleaning to much. The immune system cannot fight off germs if we don't give some level of exposure to it.

Bring back mud pies & throw away the forever baby wipes!

that's what my husband said....he said the worst thing that you can do is kill all of the germs. There's good germs and bad and our bodies all got used to them, so taking them all away starts us back over at square one again.

I did send out some information about the could and flu season, I am assuming that most of the parents did not read it...ugh

I think I need to start implementing BlackCats 48 hour exclusion rule, but not too sure how this will settle with all of the parents if I decide to change this now............

[MarinaVanessa]

Here is what I have in my college book "Health, Safety, and Nutrition for the Young Child" (which is made for child development college classes for those working in child care, mainly centers):

Communicable Illness:
Common Cold

Signs & Symptoms:
Highly contagious infection of the upper respiratory tract accompanied by a slight fever, chills, runny nose, fatigue, muscle ache and headaches. Onset may be sudden.

Infectious Agent:
Virus

Methods of Transmission:
Airborne through contact with secretions from the respiratory tract, e.g., coughs, sneezes, eating utensils, etc.

Incubation Period:
12-72 hours

Length of Communicability:
About 1 day before onset of symptoms to 2-3 days after acute illness.

Control Measures:
Prevention through education and good personal hygiene. Avoid exposure. Exclude first day or two. Antibiotics not effective against viruses. Avoid aspirin products (possible link to Reye's syndrome). Observe for complications, e.g., earaches, bronchitis, croup, pneumonia.

So ... here is my argument ... she says you aren't cleaning enough? You get a cold from breathing in someone else's coughy nastyness just as badly as you would from touching something that someone left their germies on. Her child either breathed in someone's sneeze/cough or put her hands into her mouth after touching something that someone sneezed or coughed on. Clean all you like, according to the book (put together mainly with information from the CDC and other government health agencies) colds are highly contagious and children with colds should be excluded for at least 1 day or 2 with or without a fever so you are in fact doing her and the other parents a favor by only excluding the sick children for 1 day IF they show signs of a fever, otherwise they are free to attend daycare even with a cold .

[Bookworm]

We were just talking about this today. My kids never got sick like I see kids today. More people have allergies & asthma too. I feel we are cleaning to much. The immune system cannot fight off germs if we don't give some level of exposure to it.

Bring back mud pies & throw away the forever baby wipes!

My husband says this too. I've been noticing that kids who are allowed to play, explore and get dirty don't catch as many colds. They still get the occasional cold but not as often as the ones who aren't allowed to touch or do anything. There are so many kids in my center who are allergic to something or are constantly hooked up to nebulizers for one illness or another. The majority are the kids whose houses are so clean you can literally eat off the floor. Bottom line, we can clean from now until The Lord comes, kids will still get sick. Like someone commented earlier, germs are not isolated to only daycare.

[TwinKristi]

I might get flamed but, I don't clean with bleach for the common cold. I find that each time we have a nasty virus pass through, such as norovirus, it is AFTER I bleach all the toys that everyone gets a cold. If they all have the same thing and it's a cold I let it work its way out. I can not bleach each day, I would have no time for anything else and I believe in building up the immune system! At the end of the week I will bleach the doorknobs, light switches, remotes, front of cable boxes, etc...but, not all the toys. Last time I did that it took me over 9 hours!

I don't either. The other day a little guy had diarrhea and until his Nana could come and get him I just had to deal with it. I broke out the Clorox wipes and wiped stuff down he was touching and the play toy that got diarrhea on it after a thorough cleaning. No one else had had diarrhea! LOL I really save bleach for special occasions and use regular old cleaner for everything else. Our house cleaner deep cleans things every other weekend when she's here and I tidy in between but aside from the toys that go in the mouth, which go in the sink for washing, I just wash things as needed. We were super sick last year, like from the day school started until the day it ended. But I'm hoping we got it out of our system and can be healthy this year. I managed to not get the flu, even though everyone else in my house and daycare had it, and I had to care for everyone. Everyone got the stomach bug and I got that twice, but luckily it was just a 1 day thing.
Germs are literally everywhere and we have to watch little ones who put things in their mouth. And like other pointed out, you're usually contagious before you even know you're sick which is the hardest part of preventing. Cleaning up after someone is sick is always a good idea, but it won't prevent someone else from breathing in those sneezes and cough germs!