Quote Originally Posted by 5 Little Monkeys View Post
I'm just wondering how many of you send home for runny poops? If so, what is your number?

I call for pickup after number 3. However, I've had a child with dirreaha for over a week now. She never has more than 3 in one day at daycare (well one day she did but it was too close to pickup time to bother...she did have enough time to do a 4th tho lol) so I haven't been calling for pickup. She's already had 2 today and I sent mom a text giving her a heads up that she will likely need to pick up today. (she usually poops after lunch for sure) Mom said that would be fine and to just let her know.

So, what's your "magic" number lol
I'm procrastinating all the things I should be getting done the week before school starts. This obviously includes silently stalking the forum, itching to comment, but trying to adjust to my new life, although being stuck in limbo leaves me all over the place. So here I am caving in over a runny poop post lol

So on to the runny poops...Does this child have any other symptoms? If not, I don't think that sending the child home for fear of "illness" or being contagious to other kids is an issue here. Sounds very much like this child has a food intolerance or is eating a high fibre, whole food diet which is maybe a little extreme. Runny poop even once a day is not normal. I'm more concerned about consistency of poop than frequency but pair them together and it is almost certainly a food intolerance if the child doesn't have any other symptoms. If the child was ill, then no doubt there would be other symptoms and the child's energy levels would be depleted and you would see this child deteriorate, given it's been going on for a while. Sending home because you don't want to clean it up is each to their own, I know you haven't said this, but I know from previous posts on here, many wouldn't deal with it. I would also imagine calling for pick up daily is less than ideal for the parents, especially given that it doesn't sound like the child is ill. I would be strongly urging this parent to take their child to the doctors for a check up, and regardless of what the doc says, keeping a food diary along with yourself to see if you can monitor any changes in diet that may be causing this, and/or see if a certain food group is possibly being given excessively. Dairy is regularly the cause of loose stools as it upsets the gut, so it may be a case of eliminating that all together for a couple weeks to see if things improve, but the first step would be to track the diet. To your original question though, 2nd loose BM and parents are called to collect should there be no known explanation for it. Child would not be able to return until 24 hours free of loose BM. As this has been going on a while, I'd be explaining that the child should be take to be medically assessed prior to returning to care. I know so many people say that for some it is normal to have loose stools, but it actually isn't. It may become the norm for some over a long period of time if this is what they experience, but that is not normal. It's loose for a reason and not "just because".