How To Prevent Baby From Getting Sick

Daycare Germs: Talking to Your Child's Teacher Near Fighting Illness

photo of teacher playing with boy in nursery

Aseelah El-Amin is a self-proclaimed germaphobe. When the Atlanta mom was looking for daycare for her eighteen-month-old daughter, she visited many child-care centers, e'er asking the directors lots of questions. She asked how they kept toys clean, what the policy was nigh sick kids, mask wearing, and how they worked to fight germs.

"I knew that when children start daycare, they get sick a lot," she says, "so I was really picky."

She found a identify most her abode where germ fighting was a tiptop priority. The staff had children take off their shoes in a small room before coming inside. Toys were cleaned every mean solar day with natural cleaning products. Parents were given a list of symptoms -- such equally diarrhea and pinkeye -- that meant ill kids had to stay home.

Like El-Amin, you lot may exist concerned about germs, hygiene, and sanitation when choosing a daycare eye, particularly in the age of COVID-xix. Then your worries may surface again when cold and influenza season starts. That's when you may notice kids with runny noses and coughs playing adjacent with your child.

These concerns are valid, pediatricians say. With and then many small kids together in a pocket-size place, daycare can be a festering ground for bacteria and viruses.

Questions to Enquire About Germs

Sick kids and daycare may go manus in hand, simply there's enough yous tin do to make certain your child-care center is doing its all-time to prevent COVID and keep the common cold virus and flu virus -- every bit well as assorted bacteria -- nether control. Get-go by asking some of these questions.

Are employees required to wear masks?

The CDC recommends universal indoor masking in early childhood programs for children ages two and older, regardless of vaccination condition.

How often do employees launder hands?

The platonic centre should crave employees to wash their easily equally oft equally a doctor does -- in betwixt touching every child.

If your child-care center doesn't accept a sink in every room, look for bottles of hand sanitizer. If employees have to leave the room to clean their hands, they may be less likely to do it.

How clean are the toys?

Many centers have a policy that toys are cleaned and sanitized at least in one case a day. Guidelines from the American University of Pediatrics, however, suggest that every time a toy is placed in a child's mouth, it should be set bated until it can be cleaned and disinfected.

What's the policy on ill kids?

No parents want their child playing adjacent to a kid who has COVID or has been exposed recently to the virus, those with a fever, pinkeye, or the flu. At the same time, if you have a busy day at work, can you afford to stay habitation because your child has a cough?

Policies on when sick children should stay home differ amongst daycare centers. According to joint recommendations by the American University of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, and the National Resource Center for Wellness and Prophylactic in Child Intendance and Early Education, a child should temporarily be kept out of daycare for whatsoever of the following:

A fever to a higher place 101° F (checked orally) accompanied by behavior modify or other symptoms (sore throat, rash, vomiting, diarrhea, etc.)
Diarrhea that can't exist contained in a diaper or that makes a toilet-trained kid incontinent
Vomiting more than ii times in a 24-hour period

Some centers may exist more or less lenient than others. While some may not even allow a kid who is sneezing to attend, others allow many types of sick kids but separate them in a different room.

But if a child is isolated because of not feeling great, that child should as well exist given attention and non exist left alone or ignored.

Know the Policies

Most centers ask parents to sign a form that explains the center's policy for sick kids, and the policy is also posted. But some parents merits they are unaware of the policy when it's their child that is sick.

It's important to detect out what the written policy of the center is regarding the issues y'all care about. And so there'south no confusion.

Oftentimes daycare workers get frustrated with parents who dose their sick kids with medicine and driblet them off at daycare. Eye workers say they see the most fevers after nap time, says Richter, because typically that's when the medication wears off.

In the boxing against germs, yous demand to keep in mind that there's a limit to how much germ protection y'all can provide. There are some things parents simply can't control. It's a fact, your kid's going to get ill at some point whether or not they are in a daycare eye. That's part of the normal procedure of growing up.