The children are back in school and we are already falling back into the same routine after the summer break. After the craziness of getting back into a routine the sick bugs will be here before we know it within a month or two. The kids will then need to stay home and get better.
Then again, are the kids really sick?
I remember when I was a child and I used to want to stay home once in a while. I used to make up some sort of excuse that I wasn’t feeling good at all. Sometimes my mom would catch on and know I was just faking it.
Now that I am a mom myself, I wonder whether I am never being played like that with my own children. Sometimes I can’t always tell, but over the years I’ve come up with ways of reaching a decision if my kids are actually sick or faking it.
“My head hurts.”
Kids sometimes have a hard time describing the severity of the pain they are feeling. If your child is crying and not willing to play or joke around then it’s a good idea to keep your child home. One thing to consider is if pain medication, such as ibuprofen or acetaminophen, doesn’t help or continues more than two hours than your child should stay home. You should also consider calling your doctor and getting an appointment.
“My tummy doesn’t feel good.”
Signs of that your child might not be feeling good with tummy issues can be seen through several symptoms. Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea are signs of a stomach bug and you should keep your child home. A trick I learned if my children were using this excuse to fake that they were sick is if they were able to jump into eating food right away. Most stomach bugs will cause your appetite to go away. Your child also might have chronic or repeated abdominal pain, which is never something you should ignore and should call your doctor about.
“I feel hot.”
This one is an easy one to check, especially with those special devices I’ve always loved called thermometers. It’s easy to check your child’s temperature but just make sure yours is working properly and always to have one on hand. Schools vary from one another one what they think is considered a fever, such as 100 or 101 degrees. My children’s school always required them to be free from a fever for 24 hours before going back. It’s recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics to call your doctor if your child’s temperature goes over 104 degrees, says WebMD.
Cough, Cough or “My throat hurts.”
Upper-respiratory infections and sore throats are one of the reasons mostly my children have missed school. If your child is faking a cough, it’s easy to tell based on if they stop coughing. Most children will continue to cough if they have a respiratory infection because the body is trying to get rid of the mucus increase in their body. Usually you are able to send your kids off to school if they don’t have fever or headache when they have a cough.
With sore throats it can be a harder to detect as sometimes it might be strep throat, which most of the time requires antibiotics since it is a bacterial infection. An easy diagnosis can be made from your doctor with a throat swab, which you can get the results quickly. If the it is a viral infection then your child shouldn’t have a fever, but likely a cough and hoarse voice.