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Ok so as a working mom I struggle with care for my kids when they are sick. They can't go to school as they are too sick and I mean not just a cold that I can pump them full of Advil and send them but full blown sick. I admit I have been " one of those parents" who send their kids to school sick with a cold or sore throat because I can't miss work. However, I wonder what do other parents do? Grandparents or extended family are out. They live too far away. My boss is an ass it seems and as it is I go to work myself sick because I can't afford to take time and must save unpaid sick days for when my kids need to stay home. What do other parents do? I can't be the only one facing this dilemma?  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

exactly what you do. Work like a dog even when we're so sick we shouldn't be there so that if a child gets too sick we can take an unpaid day and hopefully not lose our jobs or have our hours cut back for being "unreliable". Such is the life of your average working parent.

I think a lot of people have this dilemma, and a lot of people and kids go to work or school sick a lot of the time. It just ends up being a problem then, because so many germs are being spread, and people just keep catching things over and over again because their immune system is down, and they are being exposed to everyone elses illness all the time.  
One of my close friends had to keep her child home 3 times last winter for a stomach bug. Honestly, kids should not be catching things like that, that often. When I was a kid, if we had a stomach bug, we stayed home, and were kept home until 24 hours after the vomiting/diarrhea had passed. This way, we were well rested and recovered ourselves, and less contagious to other's once we returned to school. Then we did not catch stuff like this so often because we allowed ourselves to recover properly. I do the same with my kids.  
Most parents cannot do this though, so basically once the worst of it is over, the kid is right back at school, even though they are still contagious and do not have the proper amount of energy to be back at school. They spread it to other's, and likely end up picking up something else along the way as well because they are still weak from what they are trying to get over.  
 
Employers that hire people with young children in daycare or school have to realize that there is a lot of illness passed around all year long in these places, and it is inevitable that your child will likely be home several times per year because they are too sick to be at daycare or school. Not everyone has back up babysitters or grandparents to rely on every time their child gets sick. Maybe if employers were a little bit more flexible and people were a little bit more considerate and stayed home while sick, we would have a lot less illness passed around, and things like time off work wouldn't be such a problem.  
My husbands employer is the same way though. He'd pretty much have to be dying before they would not give him a hard time for phoning in sick.

I do not remember being sick as much as mykids have been these past few years when i was a child either. There are SO MANY parents in my childs daycare who send their kids to daycare sick, or not fully recovered, as well as school. I see it as such a rotten thing to do, not only to their own children, but to other children as well. I could not imagine making my child go to daycare or school sick. If i get in trouble, so be it. Just last week a parent told me in the locker area that her child vomitted during the night twice, but was fine when she woke up. This was 7:30 am. How can you possibly tell if your child is well when they have not been awake long enough to know if the child had something contagious? I informed the staff immedietly bc i do not want my child catching anything. At the end of the day, that child was not there, and soon found out the child had vomitted in class. Now everyone else was exposed to that. I just dont understand! I get that some work places do not like when parents miss work, but if parents kept their kids home for a day or two, or util they are recovered, there would be MUCH less illnesses going around our schools and daycares.

can understand your frustration but parents should not have kids then as yes it is frustrating I know but it is not your neighbor, your family,your boss or even government's fault and decision that you have kids and they get sick at times.  
It just comes with package of becoming parents.

you are not alone. We had that dilemma this morning. I feel like crap. My child is starting to get a cold. So we both decided to tough it out today. I told him if he started to feel too bad to call me and I'd come and get him. I cannot afford to take time off when I am sick and when he is sick and for all the in-service days and still afford to live. I had to take Friday off because of no school. It can be really tough sometimes.  
 
 
Edited by Happy1986, 2015-11-23 11:10:22

1 chance said "can understand your frustration but parents should not have kids then as yes it is frustrating I know but it is not your neighbor, your family,your boss or even government's fault and decision that you have kids and they get sick at times.   It just comes with package of becoming parents. "

Seriously.....making a major life choice to not have kids just so employers don't have to deal with illness? Most ridiculous thing I've heard today. That would be like telling people not to become an employer of any sort because they don't want to have to run the risk of dealing with sick staff from time to time. As the employer you have to deal with those things when they arise. You can't force a sick staff member to be at work.  
When you choose to have children, you have to also choose to plan for things like illness. You need to try your best to have back up plans, but you also need to develop a good employer/employee relationship so that these things can be worked through efficiently and easily.If you aren't abusing your time off, there really should be no issue.  
Honestly, if I were an employer, I would not want my staff at work sick and spreading germs to others at the work place. I'd rather have 1 employee take 2 or 3 days off and not spread their illness than have all of my staff take turns getting sick over the course of a few weeks and totally screwing up the schedule and productive business.

I am curious as to those that feel employers should be very accommodating when it comes to employees and sick time. As an employer this year alone with 5 workers, 37 sick days were called in. So in 11 months I have had to contend with almost 2 months of someone not being at work. Makes for a lot of time missed. Some workers have had the flu multiple times this year but only for a day. So those that want employers to show compassion at what point do you draw the line?

So over an 11 month span, you have had to accomodate 37 days. In my opinion, being an employer myself, that is a fair amount of time, especially if they are not being paid for those days off. If you had employees taking advantage of sick time/days, that is one thing, and a problem, but if you have an employee who is ill, or who has a child who is ill, i feel it very reasonable to take a day or two off so others do not becone ill, and spread sickness back and forth and all over. I cant understand why employers get upset with their employees not coming to work when they are ill. That being said, i really have not come across a lot of those who get mad if someone misses work if they are legitamately ill.

what 1chance is trying to say is that one shouldn't expect an employer to cover the costs of an employees sickness. My feeling as a parent, parents should budget sick time into their finances. Just assume a certain amount of unpaid days are ahead of you and save for the event you must be off with your children. And then please do take those days and keep your children out of the system.  
 

I am not ridiculous. I am a mom and employer. I never expected anything from anyone or anything change for my problems or any situations. Didn't know that made me a bad person. And my kids are well behaved and responsible and all do a well job at work. We are not gangster family.  
This is my opinion and I do not recall calling any ebrandon people stupid, ridiculous, dum or similar words. Thank you.

Namaste3 said "So over an 11 month span, you have had to accomodate 37 days. In my opinion, being an employer myself, that is a fair amount of time, especially if they are not being paid for those days off. If you had employees taking advantage of sick time/days, that is one thing, and a problem, but if you have an employee who is ill, or who has a child who is ill, i feel it very reasonable to take a day or two off so others do not becone ill, and spread sickness back and forth and all over. I cant understand why employers get upset with their employees not coming to work when they are ill. That being said, i really have not come across a lot of those who get mad if someone misses work if they are legitamately ill. "

And that is just it....where do you draw the line? Bring in a sick note is perfect as I believe you are sick. But then the arguement goes out of if you're sick you just want to stay home. Some people get a sniffle and want to stay home. When I hear an employee tossing their cookies in the bathroom I will send them home. It goes both ways of yes I agree with it is an excessive amount of time yet employees will argue that it is only a week per employee. So that is a few days for the parent to be sick and a few days for a child to be sick. It is where do you draw the line? I know working my wife and I would stagger sick time so it wasn't always me. If you have multiple kids and each is sick 2-3 times a year times 2-3 kids that can equal a couple weeks of sick time days per family. That doesn't include the parents getting sick either. And as an employer it is hard for me to feel compassion during sick days when I cannot recall the last time I have ever called in sick. That makes it tougher.

You also need to factor in that it overworks the employees who do show up each day when sickness days are continuously occurring for others. In my place of business we have one employee who is gone often because of children being sick, herself or her parent. And another who will take the day off because her menstrual cycle is on or she didn't sleep well the night before. Uggh

It is hard! As a daycare provider I know it's hard for parents but for everyone involved it is best to just stay home.  
 
My rule is if a child cannot actively take part in our activities during the day they need to be home. Throwing up/diarrhea/fever etc are a definite stay home!  
 
When a child is sent to school/daycare sick they pass on that illness to others. It then usually hits sibling and parents. Then when I get sick I cannot look after any kids and it then affects all families in my care who now have to take time off just because I had to close. I also don't get paid if I don't work so I get how hard it is. It's a vicious cycle.  
 
It's hard but it comes with having kids.  
 

1 chance said "I am not ridiculous. I am a mom and employer. I never expected anything from anyone or anything change for my problems or any situations. Didn't know that made me a bad person. And my kids are well behaved and responsible and all do a well job at work. We are not gangster family.   This is my opinion and I do not recall calling any ebrandon people stupid, ridiculous, dum or similar words. Thank you. "

I never judged you on your parenting, or how you are as an employer etc. I never accused you of expecting anything from anyone for your problems either.  
 
Your statement about not having children just so you don't have to compensate for the time that they will be ill is what I called ridiculous, because that is in fact very ridiculous. No one would ever have kids if that were a deciding factor. Kids get sick, that's just part of it.  
 
As long as you are not abusing your sick days, and your children or yourself are legitimately ill, it is best to stay home, away from other's so that it does not spread. If your employer cannot handle a respectful employee who is being considerate of others and staying home or keeping their child home, then the employer is the one with the problem. If you are constantly staying home or keeping your kids home for a sniffle, then yeah, I would think your employer would have some justification in not being happy with you.  
There has to be respect both ways. If you are a good employee and use your time off wisely, then there should not be a problem. And as an employer, if you are working with your employees to best manage their needs as well, you will see yourself with good employees who will last and be a benefit to your business, instead of just having people there that are just there to put in their hours for the pay cheque.  
 
As for the 37 sick days between 5 employees at your business, I maybe could see that as being a bit excessive. That is almost 8 sick days in one year per employee. In the 15 years I've been with my husband, I don't think he's taken 8 sick days that whole time. When I was working as well, I can barely remember calling in sick. Thinking back over the last year, we have only had our kids sick enough to be at home for 5 or 6 days all year. If my husband and I were to have to split that, it would mean 3 days each, which I don't see as excessive at all over a year. But like I said, we keep our kids at home when ill, and let them recover properly, and so we reduce the amount of time that we may end up needing if we just kept pushing through illness and weakening our immune systems. As a stay at home mom, we obviously don't have the issue of needing care when our kids are sick, but I can tell you for sure that it takes me a heck of a lot longer to recover when I'm sick, because there is no such thing as sick days for me. I have no choice but to just keep going, looking after the kids and our household. If I could have a day or two to look after myself I wouldn't be sick so long.

If a person just stayed home when sick the illness would go away faster and would affect less people. I work with kids and know that it is appreciated when parents keep their sick kids home but as a parent myself I understand that you can't. Like what the hell is one to do! I don't get paid for sick days so I don't understand why my employer gets so pissy about it. I work while unwell all the time unless I'm throwing up. So it's not like I call in sick all the time. My sick days are mostly when my own child is sick!! I wasnt asking for my boss to compensate just wondered what others do when their kids are sick?  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

ece2 said "If a person just stayed home when sick the illness would go away faster and would affect less people. I work with kids and know that it is appreciated when parents keep their sick kids home but as a parent myself I understand that you can't. Like what the hell is one to do! I don't get paid for sick days so I don't understand why my employer gets so pissy about it. I work while unwell all the time unless I'm throwing up. So it's not like I call in sick all the time. My sick days are mostly when my own child is sick!! I wasnt asking for my boss to compensate just wondered what others do when their kids are sick?                   "

I think a lot of other people scramble to find care just like you do, and they use their sick days for their children not themselves.  
You are right, the employer doesn't have to pay you for your time off, they just have to pay whoever comes in to cover your hours. It only becomes a problem if the employer doesn't have anyone to cover the shift.  
My husbands employer would rather have him at work puking than staying at home without pay. They can't complain then that they just paid him to be in the bathroom part of the day, and they can't complain when they catch what he had.

Just curious, how many working moms are expected to stay home with the sick child while the working dad goes in? Maybe they should alternated the days off a sick child requires?  
 
For single parents, this is where a network can come in handy. Knowing that parent "F" is working evenings and home during the day may help with the sudden need. It does not have to be a blood relative looking after a sick child.  
 
Even if you had a deal to go in for the morning (because you network had parent "G" available, but only until 2:00 PM) with the understanding that you had to leave after everyone else had returned from their lunch break, the employer may be more understanding as well.  

I can understand your frustration, however, do you not fear loosing your job by calling your boss an ass in an online forum. Those who think they are anonymous rarely are!

ChildrensDenInc said "I can understand your frustration, however, do you not fear loosing your job by calling your boss an ass in an online forum. Those who think they are anonymous rarely are! "

Thought about that too. When they mention kids being an employer that usually means a couple to few days off per year per child. Then there is also the parent that can get sick and need to stay home. I know my child was good for being sick 1-2 times a year for a couple days at a time. It should be parent is sick days and if needed to stay home with child it is used as vacation days.