What do YOU do when your child is ill?

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solimum
Posts: 1420
Joined: Wed May 09, 2007 3:09 pm
Location: Solihull, West Midlands

Post by solimum »

Over 10 plus years of working parenthood I have:

Called on friends/ neighbours - notably when phoned by the school during a meeting 3 hours away by train..

Swapped flexitime days to avoid having to take leave

Worked from home (complete with interuptions for forehead-soothing, hours spent in doctor's waiting rooms..)

Sent slightly-under-the-weather children into school only to receive the dreaded "X has been sick" call from school as I walk into work..

Kept slightly-under-the-weather children at home only to have them perk up by breaktime once it was too late for me to get to my important meeting..

Left recouperating-from-the-flu teenagers at home while working ten minutes away (or popping to the shops/ to fetch younger siblings etc etc) with hot lemon-and-honey and a neighbour on call

I think occasionally OH working from home has coincided with a child's illness but usually he's left the house before the decision time even arrives...
mike1880
Posts: 2563
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2008 10:51 pm

Post by mike1880 »

We've been lucky so far, ours have only needed a day or two off school in total up to now (our son, bless his little cotton socks, like "Sandford and Merton" in "3 Men in a Boat" invariably falls ill on the first day of any school holiday and recovers just in time to go back to school at the end of it).

We haven't any family we can call on, so unless it looks as though they will pass out/be sick/infect the rest of the class with the Black Death/any of the other things schools take a dim view of, then they just have to drag themselves in. They simply don't expect to have time off sick, poor things!

By and large, when it's been really necessary, one or other of us has to take time off or work from home, which luckily both of us can do to some extent (it's usually me that covers these sort of things because I'm massively less motivated than my wife), although it depends in my case partly on who my current assignment manager is - single and childless women being notably hostile to the idea, I find!

Mike
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