The School Petri Dish

Last week marked the first full week of school for my kids and already one of them is out for a couple of days. She was diagnosed with a case of head lice and I have spent the better part of four hours applying creams and ointments and combing out those awful little critters. To make matters worse the rest of our household is going to have to go through the same process just in case they have latched onto us.

It's amazing to me that my kids are always the picture of health until they get back to school and are bombarded with all kinds of bugs (the figurative and literal variety), germs, bacteria and diseases. It's like the school is one big giant Petri dish that they are all tossed into with even the strongest and healthiest getting dragged down into the mire. I'm waiting for the "Survivor Elementary School" season to begin where the last kid to contract any sort of illness is names sole survivor.

The worst part of this whole deal is that when the kids do get sick they bring it home and dutifully pass it on to Mom and Dad causing a domino effect that result in lot school, work, and productivity time. Just last year I can recall three separate occasions where I contracted strep throat. On one of those occasions neither of my kids got sick but acted as a carrier of sorts bringing it home with them. You usually get a note from the school saying that something is going around about 2 weeks after you have finally recovered.

There is so much pressure on parents to send kids to school these days even when they are sick that this type of things simply can't be avoided. I think the school districts should be a little more lenient and let the parents decide when they should or shouldn't send the children in. We could nip a lot of these illnesses in the bud quickly rather than have them getting more and more run down and going in and spreading it around. I'll bet there would be a lot less actual school time lost if parents were allowed to adopt this early warning type approach. No-one knows better than a parent when their kids are even slightly off their normal game.

For now though, normal service will have to continue and we will have to load up on prescriptions, salves and ointments in order to face the medical battles of the coming year as a fresh rash (pardon the pun) of strep throat, flu, chicken pox, and those dreaded head lice march their way from the schools doors to ours.