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Parents Magazine doesn’t really address the issue of whether or not you should allow your child to stay home from school due to the common cold. Teachers at schools advise that your child should stay home for a cold only if they are running a fever and many people have varying ideas on the matter of children missing school for the sniffles.

Dimetapp and Tylenol Cold can make a child feel somewhat better at home, but if you send your child to school with meds in tow, then you may discover that you will have to fill out forms just for the child to take the medicine that you send with him or her. School
Nurses are not so keen on the idea of kids stopping by to take a swig of Dimetapp, so now it is essential to have relatively unnecessary paperwork for a simple teaspoon of the Tylenol Cold that you send to school.

Common colds can turn into common problems if your child believes that they should stay home every time they sneeze and if you allow little Johnny to stay home because of a simple cough or a runny nose. And if you tell little Johnny that the school systems only want those children to miss school if they are running a fever, then little Johnny will come up with some creative ways to induce a fever.

Children with colds are most likely needed more at school than at home but then you have the risk factor of spreading the cold bug to everyone who comes into contact with your child. Everyone will certainly send their thank you notes later as they are asking someone for a Kleenex no doubt. So the pendulum swings both ways. You are left with no idea of what to do. Do you send a child with a cold to school or do you let them stay home?

Home alone makes for serious problems for adults who must work and the sick child is home by themselves but not really sick enough to be in the bed. Mischief sets in and the child is bored yet they aren’t sick enough for you to miss work to take care of them. How do you take care of the sick child with a cold anyway? Basically, you pass them a box of Kleenex and say “bless you” when they sneeze and that about covers it.

Ultimately, the child with a common cold should go to school if the child doesn’t have a fever. Encourage your child to use good health habits such as washing their hands after sneezing and covering their mouth while coughing. Advising the school of your child’s cold is unnecessary just give them cold medicine before you send them on their merry way on the school bus and load them up with more doses of cough syrup at the end of the day!

Common colds normally don’t prove to be a major setback for children and they can’t be for adults in the work place. If you teach your child to miss school when they have a common cold; when they become a working adult they will have many days of calling in sick because they are accustomed to staying home when the conditions for the day are less than perfect. The best thing you can do is to try to teach your child to hang tough and stay in school.