If You Have To Ask If Your Kid Is Too Sick To Go Somewhere, The Answer is 'Yes'

I feel like there are two groups of people out there; those who don’t let a little stomach bug or case of explosive diarrhea get in the way of fun times with their kids, and people who aren’t assholes. I stumbled across this little gem on r/Parenting this morning, and it brought me to a dark place in my mind:

Sick kids: at what point do you keep them out of activities?

So I’m here with my first, who has some stomach virus that doesn’t seem to be bothering him much except for giving him diarrhea, wondering about attending library storytime this week. I’m pretty sure he caught this bug there last week (and shared it with daddy and me).

He doesn’t seem to be in much discomfort and I’m sure he’d love to go… but I don’t want to be an asshole to other parents/kids.Thanks for sharing your thoughts!To this person’s credit, at least she’s asking people what the right thing to do is, and hopefully she will heed their advice, which is a unanimous “NO”, but I can’t help but feel a little annoyed that this is even something people consider.When I see sick kids someplace, I put my judgy pants on, followed by a surgical mask because in order to get me sick, all someone has to do is look at me. In fact, I’m sick right now with a stomach thing that I can’t seem to shake. I can walk around and everything, but I’m still going to stay home because I pride myself in not being a dickweed wherever possible. This goes double for my kid.The fact is, sometimes going some place with a sick kid is unavoidable. Life must continue on, and there have been many times when my child was younger that she was sick, dad was working super late, and if I didn’t at least run to the store to get Tylenol, no one was sleeping that night. So I do understand.

What I don’t understand is taking your little germ factory to highly-populated areas with other kids (and adults) around just because you don’t want to interrupt your routine and it’s getting boring sitting at home listening to the diarrhea chorus all day long. It’s selfish, and it’s rude, and it causes the never-ending circle of snot to continue on and on and on, as illustrated by this commenter:

“… I once had a play group mom bring her kid to group after he’d been puking and having diarrhea all night. He “seemed ok” that morning, so she came. She wound up causing 33 people to get violently ill. Some of those people were dads who didn’t even go to play group. Her kid gave it to a bunch of us, and we shared it amongst our families. Don’t be that mom.”

This goes for adults too. Nothing makes me angrier than hearing about so-and-so who is super sick and went to work anyway and then within three days my husband, my daughter, and I are all laid low with some kind of Ebola thing. Not cool. I put those people on my shit list right alongside parents who bring their sick kids to school/daycare/the playground/storytime/whatever.

Don’t. Be. That. Mom.

(Image: JPC-PROD/Shutterstock)