Sometimes, figuring out whether a child is too sick for school is an easy call. A vomiting child, or one with a fever or a raging case of pink eye, is clearly taking the day off. Some schools are even kind enough to spell out the parameters for a return to the classroom, asking that children stay home for 24 hours after the last symptoms or after starting a course of antibiotics.
Those are the easy cases. But at our house, which includes two adults and four kids, this year’s illnesses have not been so neatly categorized. Several of us have had nagging coughs of the deep, juicy, please-keep-that-away-from-me variety that dragged on for weeks. Others have complained of stomach misery, but never made use of the bucket next to the bed. We’ve had endless sniffles and endless debates about whether a child should just push through and go to school or stay home.