Keep Your Sick Kids Home, Dammit

To the person who thinks it’s ok to __________________ with their sick child:

• go to Target

• go grocery shopping

• go to the library

• go to school

• go to sports practice

• go to a kids play center

• go to a friends house or invite kids over to their house

Let’s do some math: How long has your child been sick? A week? Let’s multiply that by the number of kids I have (four). That’s a full month of sickness that you’ve just inflicted upon my family.

Now add two more weeks to that, because there’s no way my husband and I are getting out alive after being coughed on, sneezed on, snotted on, and incubated with every night because our sick kid(s) are in our bed. We’re now up to a month and a half.

That’s right, six solid weeks of no sleep and complete misery for an entire household all because you couldn’t wait a few days until your child was no longer contagious.

Oh, and while you have your calculator out, you can multiply that by two…because after the time it takes to circulate through my entire family, the first child will get sick all over again. That’s 12 weeks, friends… three drippy, goopy, sleepless months.

That’s like, an entire season. All of winter. Done.

Now, if I’m being honest, it doesn’t always happen this way. Sometimes it’s longer and sometimes it shorter, it all just depends on the particular bug and its incubation period. But the above formula is accurate. That is of course if we start using exponents, which is when all the kids get sick at once.

Can we all just agree to disagree on this? Please. I don’t need your help strengthening my children’s immune system.

Keep your sick kids home, dammit, and I promise to do the same.

Related post: 7 Murphy’s Laws When Your Kid is Sick