Too Sick for School

Parenting Resources and Community Outreach

It’s often hard for parents to decide if their child is too sick to go to school or daycare.

Your pediatrician’s advice or the school’s rules should be your first consideration. If your child is experiencing any of the symptoms below, you may need to keep them home.

Considerations for keeping your child at home:

• If your child has a temperature (oral or rectal) of 100.5 degrees or more during the past 24 hours.
• If your child has persistent heavy nasal discharge.
• If your child has a persistent heavy cough.
• If your child has skin eruptions or an undiagnosed rash.
• If your child has redness of the eyelid linings or an irritation of the eyes followed by swelling or discharge.
• If your child is vomiting.
• If your child has difficult or rapid breathing.
• If your child has diarrhea (more than one abnormally loose stool in a 24-hour period).
• If your child is unusually fussy, cranky, not acting like their typical self, and you don’t know why.
• If the child has a communicable condition, such as chicken pox, conjunctivitis, German measles, measles, mumps, strep throat, etc.
• If your child is not fever free for 24 hours without fever reducing medication.

Consider allowing your child to return to school:

• If the child’s cold has subsided.
• If your child has been without a fever for 24 hours without fever-reducing medication.
• If your child has not had diarrhea for 24 hours.
• If your child has a doctor’s note saying they are not contagious and are fever-free.
• If your child is safely past the incubation period of a communicable illness to which they have has been exposed.