What Do You Expect When Starting Daycare?

Sounds to me you are doing what you can. My guess is they are probably first time moms and have not experienced putting a child in daycare before. I always knew that my kids would start getting sick when they started a new daycare and at the beginning of every school year. Unfortunately you are right parents send their kids to daycare and school sick. They a lot of times feel they don't have a choice but that is not fair to you. Just keep doing what you are going. Too bad there is not something to make every kid and parent walk through when they come in that would sanitize them and anything that comes in. Good luck!

It sounds like you're doing everything right that is under your control. Parents of infants - especially first timers - can worry an awful lot in ways that are not always reasonable or logical. This isn't your fault.

In our local schools, there is a rule that sick kids must be fever & vomit free for 48 hours before returning. A lot of people don't follow that for various reasons, but all the school can do is send kids home that present as sick during the day.

I suppose as a business, one thing you can do is make the illness thing contractual. You can give yourself the right to 'fire' a family from care if you know they are doing it on purpose. I mean, you'd still lose clients that way but at least it would be at your discretion.

I hope that writing your question was helpful in decreasing your frustration. You must know it's not the cleanliness of your daycare that is the problem.

I do think two things have changed significantly over the years. First, folks seem more stressed than ever and tend to dump their feelings on others. You are a perfect target. Second, more parents are under strict rules to come to work and are sending sick kids to daycare and to schools.

My suggestion is that you accept that children will be moved out of your childcare. It is not going to help to take this personally and defend yourself. Indeed, that's an excellent way to have parents increase their complaints. When a parent is expressing anger over illness, I think that all complaints should be handled by you, quietly and respectfully, but without apologizing. In the end, the families that stay will be the parents who understand children in groups share illnesses, and that not all illnesses start at school.

Kids get sick at daycare.
They infect each other.
Especially the babies - they are being exposed to more or less public germs for the first time and they come down with everything for a few years.
It was that way when our son was in daycare - and they cleaned all day every day.

Some parents are going to blame you no matter if you cleaned till you could eat off the floor.
All you can do is to explain your cleaning procedures - parents have to take it or leave it.
Don't get too upset if they leave - it's just business.
Unless they have a plan for keeping their child at home - no place is going to be any better - and kids get sick at home too.
Heck - what they pick up just sitting in a shopping cart is enough to make anyone sick.

My child started full time daycare at 12 weeks. He was ok for the first few months, and then he was sick almost every 2 weeks for the next six months. I was fortunate that my husband and I had a bit of job flexibility. But I know several parents who gave their children tylenol and hoped for the best. They did so out of desperation-- they had no family in the area to help-- and they felt horrible about not being able to care for their kids the way they wanted to.

The thing is, almost any pediatrician will say that frequent illness is inevitable when kids start group care. It either happens at daycare or in kindergarten. The moms who pulled their kids just don't know that yet.

There were a few things that our daycare did that seemed to help a bit.

1) They installed cubbies outside the nursery. Parents took their child's coats off outside the nursery. Diaper bags were also left there. This cut down on some of the germs that were entering the room.

2) parents were required to remove their shoes or wear disposable shoe covers before entering the nursery, to avoid tracking outside dirt and germs onto the floors that babies played on.

3) Infant teachers wore smocks over their street clothes. The smocks were removed each day and washed.

I volunteered in my kids' daycare/preschool when I could for field trips. It was a great facility, with very trained individuals. They took great care not to spread germs. I was horrified however when I watched one teacher pass ONE wet wipe to a line of children sitting waiting for lunch.

So - maybe watch practices when they don't think you are looking. Even the best daycare workers sometimes cut corners.

That being said, it sounds like you are taking all kinds of precautions. There are always parents who dope up their kids and hope they get through the day when they don't have backup child care. We could work from home and had flexible hours so we work around illness but a lot can't. We saw parents drop off limp kids and some teachers (new) wouldn't stand up to parents. They'd wait until nap time when kids' temps would spike, then call them to come get them. An hour + later, the kid had infected the class.

I'd get stricter policies in place, and if the parents do it more than x amount of times, out they go. Mean business.

*My kids all got sick when started daycare but were good once they hit school. It's to be expected.

How do other daycares deal with this kind of thing? I would make all parents sign a very strict policy about sickness. No bringing in your child until 24 hours after the fever/puking/pink eye/whatever is over. If they drop off a sick child they have to come pick up their child. They cannot drop off a sleeping child. They cannot dose their child with Tylenol or Ibuprofen (to bring down the fever) and bring them in. Other things you can do is change your daycare to take less kids. No babies. Hire a cleaning person to come regularly to disinfect everything so you don't have to. If a mom feels their child is coming down sick too often then they can switch to someone else. Personally, I would not do that many children. 70 kids is a LOT. I would scale down. It will make your life easier. Also - don't take it personally. Sicknesses go around. Parents can't blame you for this.

I'm sorry this is happening to you. It sounds like you have good procedures in place to prevent as much as possible. One of my pet peeves is people who send their kids to church sick. My daughter was helping out in a classroom and an elementary aged kid wanted to sit in her lap. Later when the mom came to pick her up she mentioned she had been to the doctor that afternoon and had been diagnosed with strep, but she was on an antibiotic and didn't have fever so wasn't contagious. You guessed it, within 48 hours my daughter was at the doctor's office with strep. I don't get it and it is so infuriating to me. If they're sick, keep them home...what's so stinking hard about that?????

Keep your chin up and remember you're doing all you can to prevent. A child can look fine one in the morning and sick as a dog by the afternoon.

I think you are doing everything you can to prevent the spread of illness. Do you have a 'sick room'? If not I would suggest you figure out how to separate the sick kids from the rest of them until someone arrives to get them.
I remember reading about a hospital that established a sick daycare for parents who had to work but couldn't take the kids to daycare. They had a sniffles room, a fever room, and a spots room.
Anyway this is not your fault. I'm sorry you are going through this.

It sounds like you are doing all you can. It IS frustrating for parents when babies get sick when they start daycare. It's especially hard when they are still very little babies - 12 weeks old, etc. I remember rolling my eyes when my second ran a fever exactly 6 days after starting at daycare (viruses usually have an incubation period of 5-7 days, so that means he basically caught the virus his first day at daycare). Nonetheless, it sounds like you are being very proactive and I have no idea what more you can do about it. We all build our immune systems by being exposed to viruses, and small children don't have the immune memory yet, so they will come down with lots of viruses in a daycare setting.

On the plus side, for me, in a combined 10 years of elementary school (between 2 kids), we've had a total of 4 sick days. Basically, my kids built up great immunities in daycare and very very rarely miss school for illness. However, it's very hard for a scared new mom with few sick days (because she just used them all for maternity leave) to accept that her baby's current illness will be a long-term benefit.

I guess my only advice to you is to keep telling the parents everything that you do to prevent illnesses and don't take it personally.

Babies and young children are always sick. Daycare or not, they are always sick -unless no one ever leaves the house.

I'm sorry you are having such a rough time. I have no advise. All I can say is that some people are unrealistic about babies and toddlers and illness. You can't prevent it. All you can do is hope it isn't too bad.

The one thing I can think of, but not sure if you are allowed to do this, is to take the children's temperature in the morning within an hour or so of arrival. If they seem feverish, call the parents and let them know. Keep an eye on that child and take the temperature again later and if it goes above 100.3, I would call the parents to come pick up their child. The teachers at my son's daycare/preschool always has a thermometer handy.