Why Is My Kid Sick Already? A Teacher Mom’s Practical Take On Back-To-School Germs
7:12 a.m. last Tuesday, I was stirring coffee into my mug, staring at the half-finished permission slip for my preschool class’s apple picking trip due that day, when Leo padded into the kitchen. His socks were mismatched, his dinosaur backpack slung over one shoulder, and he kept swiping at his nose with the back of his hand. “My throat hurts,” he mumbled, leaning against my hip. I flipped the calendar on the fridge, counted the days since his last cold: 12. “How are you sick already?” I said out loud, before I even thought about it.
That question’s been coming out of my mouth a lot this time of year, and not just about my own kid. For the last 8 years I’ve taught preschool, the first month of school is just a string of parents pulling me aside after drop off, exhausted, asking the exact same thing. Last week it was Sarah, whose 4-year-old, Jax, had just come back after three days out with a stomach bug. He’d been back 48 hours when she found him sniffling at breakfast, and she looked at me like she was going to cry. “I can’t ask for another day off work,” she said. “How is he sick already?”
When Leo first started preschool three years ago, I was that parent. I’d kept him home almost all of his early years through pandemic restrictions, he didn’t go to regular playgroup, so the first three months he had something like seven colds, one after another. I was convinced his immune system was broken. I bought all the stuff: elderberry syrup, sugar-free immune gummies, those disinfecting wipes I used to wipe down every single toy he brought home every night. I spent $40 on a fancy air purifier for his room. I took him to the pediatrician, convinced something was seriously wrong.
What the pediatrician told me stuck: it’s normal. Kids who’ve spent most of their time at home, around just family, get exposed to 10 times more germs the minute they walk into a classroom. They get 8 to 12 colds a year that first year in group care, that’s just how their immune system builds up protection. Most of them are mild, your body just fights them off one by one. But the part I didn’t expect, that I’ve noticed myself with my class, is that half of what parents think is “another sickness” isn’t actually a viral cold at all.
Classrooms get opened back up after being closed all summer. Closets get aired out, old art supplies get pulled out, leaves pile up outside, mold gets stirred up with the first cool rain. All that new pollen, dust, and dander that kids haven’t been exposed to every day suddenly hits them, and it causes runny noses, scratchy throats, even a little cough that sticks around for a week or two. It looks exactly like a cold. The first time I realized this was with Leo, two years ago. He had a runny nose for three weeks straight, I thought it was one cold after another, and I took him to the doctor convinced it was sinusitis. She checked him out, asked when the symptoms were worse, said it’s just ragweed pollen, suggested a low dose of over-the-counter kids’ antihistamine, and it cleared up in two days. I felt so stupid for missing three work days over allergies.
Now that I know better, I share three small, concrete changes with parents that cut down on stress and unnecessary sick days. First, check the symptoms before you call out of work and pack your kid back into bed. If there’s no fever over 100.4, if the mucus is clear, if the cough only shows up first thing in the morning or when they’re running around outside at recess, that’s almost certainly allergies. I keep a bottle of generic kids’ Zyrtec in my pantry, and for my own kid, I give him a half dose 30 minutes before we leave for school on high-pollen days. It cuts the sniffles right out, and most of the time he can stay in school instead of missing another day.
Second, I stopped overdoing the cleaning. When Leo first started school, I’d wipe down every single thing he brought home with disinfectant: his lunch box, his crayons, the rock he found on the playground that he stuffed in his pocket. That took 20 minutes every night, and I was exhausted. Now, we just do one thing: everyone washes their hands with soap and warm water for 20 seconds (we sing the first verse of Baby Shark, that’s easy) right when we walk in the door, before we touch snacks or sit on the couch. That’s it. I don’t sanitize the doorknobs every day, I don’t throw out his water bottle after every sick day, I don’t buy the special hand soap that kills 99.9% of germs. The pediatrician told me over-sanitizing actually gets rid of the good, mild bacteria that helps kids build immunity anyway, so all that extra work was just making me tired for no reason.
Third, I stopped feeling guilty. I used to think if Leo was always sick, I was doing something wrong. I wasn’t feeding him enough vegetables, I wasn’t getting him enough sleep, I was exposing him to too much screen time that weakened his immune system. Now I know that for most kids, the first year or two of school is just going to be a lot of runny noses. It’s not your fault, it’s not a sign your kid is unhealthy, it’s just what happens when their body learns how to fight all the new germs it’s never seen before.
Last Tuesday, Leo’s temp was 99.8, he had a little scratchy throat and a runny nose, but he sat on the couch and ate two popsicles and laughed at Bluey like nothing was wrong. I texted my co-teacher, we moved the apple picking trip to next week, and I sat next to him all day, answering parent emails. Yesterday, Sarah texted me a photo of Jax holding a bright red apple at recess, with the caption: “Tried the Zyrtec trick. Sniffles gone. Saved my vacation day. Thank you.”
Leo goes back to school tomorrow, his cold is almost gone. I still have that unopened bottle of elderberry syrup in the back of my pantry that I bought three years ago, expiration date 2024, that I’ll probably throw out when I clean out the cabinets next month. I still get that question every day this time of year: How is my kid sick already? I don’t have a magic trick to stop germs from spreading, and I still end up missing a work day every few weeks when one of us has an actual fever. But these small things have cut down on the number of sick days we take by half, and cut down on the stress a whole lot more than that. I still don’t love getting that 7 a.m. “my throat hurts” announcement, but I don’t panic the way I used to. Most of the time, it’s just part of the first few months of school, and it gets better, slow but sure.
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