Quote Originally Posted by playfelt View Post
Allergies can be manifested as a cough. What is really going on is similar to a child with asthma and over time it may very well turn out that the child has asthma and that certain things trigger it such as pet dander - ie child isn't allergic to dogs in the true sense just reacts to them if that makes sense. When the child starts coughing they get their inhaler to open the airways and they do better. In the absence of any other symptoms of a cold (fever, runny nose, etc.) it is treated as asthma.

As to a doctor's note there is a cost for that in most cases and parents are not going to run to the doctor at each symptom of anything - they are going to do exactly what this parent did - send the child to a relative or take the day off to see if a cold actually develops. If it does they stay home, if child gets no worse they go to daycare. As to the lying - that is a result of setting the parent up to have no choice because they were doing a wait and see approach which is totally acceptable in this case but they need to tell you what you want to hear so child that just has a cough from 9 I would say probably asthma over allergies) can attend daycare.
The parent isn't set up to have no choice. They said the child has allergies not asthma. If the child has allergies the provider MUST know EXACTLY what the child is allergic to. The liability of having a child with allergies in your care and not having any documentation as to what the child is allergic to is through the roof. It's dangerous.

Allergies are much more rare than the public believes. It is the go to parental diagnosis to bring a sick kid to daycare. It's time for parents to do the work and pay the bills to test for allergies instead of self diagnosing and putting the provider and other kids at risk.

I have had SO many kids who had parents believe they had allergies and when tested had ZERO. By the time the testing was done they had successfully infected me and the kids. Now that testing can be done very young there is no reason to speculate. Get the testing done.