Being sick is no fun and sharing it with others is a No No. Keeping them home when they are sick is a good thing, but not usualy for adults sanity.  We adults usually get what the children have and vice versa.

interesting...

 I just ran and tried that one out on ds2 who's home with bronchitis. He giggled, then he coughed until I thought he would puke in my bed.

Here's an out there idea that I picked up reading one of Miss 10's novels - it's called the tickle test.  Basically you tickle your child - if they laugh they go to school.  If they don't, they're genuinely sick.

It might work.

I still don't know... I have send Son to school on several occassions, only to be called by the school that he has vomited or something like that. And I have kept him home on other times and he seemed perfectly fine.

The only thing I can do is ban any form of entertainment, just to make sure that is not the motivation for the sicky. So stay in bed untill noon (only allowed to read a book), and then do homework or other educational stuff that he might have missed out on.

I really don't know what is real and what is not.

our litmus test is 'are you too sick for rugby?'. They hate to miss games or practices, and if they've missed school they also miss rugby. If they're prepared to stay in bed until lunch time knowing that they won't be going to practice and/or the game that week I'm pretty sure they're sick. But I'd always err on the side of caution. As a SAHM at the moment it's an easy call for me to make but I've had that many classes over the years where I've watched the sick kids come in and spread the bugs, and then it's passed to me despite my precautions.

I'm with travelbugz, the suck it up philosophy sucks.

I get sucked in fairly often which is ironic considering I'm a nurse.  But if they get too active, it's into school uniform and off to school, it doesn't matter if it's lunchtime.

It's often really hard to decide on the degree of sickness for me too - there's a fine line between taking a day off to prevent taking a week off.  I often get it wrong both ways.

It's strange - I had to be nearly dead before I wanted to stay home from school, and when I did I pretty much got to do what I wanted.  I guess my mother knew I must be sick if I didn't want to go to school. 

Thanks for all your comments everyone.  My son was a lot healthier this morning when he woke up and I feel that I made a  good decision to keep him at home.  He was devastated when I told him he couldn't go to his Street Dance class that afternoon though!  Hopefully that sends a message to him to think really hard about how sick he really is.  My Aunty, who teaches at a primary school, was really supportive of me keeping him home.  She sees far too many kids sent to school when they're too sick to be there.  Next time he won't be allowed to have the TV on though!!!

I bore the crap out of my sick kids. If they are not going to school, they are in bed, with books, or homework. Everything else is a no no. We all had a tummy bug a few weeks ago, that was the first time I allowed movie watching while at home sick, as they quite clearly were ill.

If my children have had temps, big or small, they stay home. If they are full up with nasty colds they stay home, if they are contagious, obvisously they stay home. However if they pull the 'im too sick for school', then recover an hour later, i have been known to drive to to school late with a note. Both my school aged kids have only tried that once each, and never did it again :P

I vote for the boredom treatment as well.

But if they're sick they're sick. Let them stay home. Why send them to school to spread the bugs to another child? We're talking about 20 or more kids in a confined area, breathing in each others germs, coughing, sneezing, picking an wiping, then sharing equipement! And even if they're just a bit rundown and sniffley they're not going to learn much in that state. They're better off having some rest and going back healthy in a day or two. Their teacher has enough to deal with without coddling sick kids. Not to mention that you're spreading those germs to the teacher too. When s/he's off for a few days nursing that cold I hope nobody will be complaining about their kids having a relief teacher AGAIN.

I know it's hard when you're working as well. Bit of a lose-lose situation isn't it.

Kids are pretty quick to bounce back from colds etc and I notice that they always seem a little worse at night and/or morning and yes, seem to bounce around during the day.  If my children have had a temperature - big or little - then I keep them home as I see that temperature as a signal that their little bodies are trying to fight something off so I like to keep them warm and rested at home.    Of course, no one wants their children exposed to bugs, colds & flus from other children if they can help it, so I take that into consideration as well. I am lucky enough to be able to work from home so that makes it easier for our family (that is a decision we made when we had kids- that one of us would always be at home for them when they were younger).