Handling sick days

[CrazyEight]

I have it written into my contract that if my kids come down with something major, I will close with as much notice given as possible. That's only happened once, when my son came down with pneumonia and had to be hospitalized. Usually, when one of my kids is sick (which happens a lot with 3!) they are isolated on the couch in the living room with the tv, a bucket, juice, etc, and I am downstairs with the daycare kids, able to hear them and come up if needed. My older 2 are 5 and 6 and pretty stoic when they're sick, so if they can just veg out for a while, they're generally ok. Whenever possible my husband changes his days so he can stay home with them, but he can't always do that. We have no family closer than 1 1/2 hours away, so we've only ever used them to watch our other 2 when my son was in the hospital - I can't just call them on a whim, unfortunately. You learn to multi-task, I guess, and generally it works out ok.

My most difficult times have been when I came down with a stomach bug after all the kids were dropped off. I didn't want to call parents unless I really needed to, and was able to push through, but let's just say they got to watch a movie that day, which NEVER happens, lol. I've also had a call from the school right in the middle of naptime saying that my son was sick and I had to go pick him up. We live right next door to the school, but I did NOT want to have to wake up 4 sleeping little ones to go and pick him up. My husband was able to use his lunch break to come and get him and drop him off at home, otherwise that would not have been fun!

[AmandaKDT]

My husband uses his sick days to stay home when our own children are really sick, as he gets paid sick days and I don't. I rarely close the daycare and will just cope with caring for my own sick kids along with the daycare kids. I have only really closed due to my own illness, as it was impossible to care for kids while I had the flu.

If it is something contagious I will close as long as I would require the daycare parents to keep their own children home, and then I would be open and it would be the daycare parents's choice to send their kids. If I am open, then fees are charged. I don't have family to send my own children to as they either work full time or live far away, so I don't have the option to send them somewhere else. My daughter had strep throat last summer and one family kept their child home, while others sent theirs anyway.

I have had to close for several days at a time due to the hospitalization of my younger daughter and I just notified parents that I had to be closed and they understood. In that situation there is no other option, and if they weren't understanding then they would be finding a different daycare.