Early Years
The nursery sickness policy will cost you working days you have not planned
Every setting has exclusion rules, and they are not really about how ill your child is. Read them before you need them, and build the cover plan first.
This is written to be used rather than admired. Each section below is a decision about nursery sick days, and each one has a default.
Before you start
- Exclusion rules exist to limit spread within a setting, not to assess your individual child.
- Policies and exclusion periods differ by setting and country and are revised over time.
- The cover arrangement matters more than any prediction of how often it will be needed.
Exclusion is about the group, not your child
A setting’s rules exist to limit transmission across a room of children who share everything, which is a different question from whether your child is unwell. That is why a child who seems perfectly cheerful can still be excluded, and why the rule can feel disproportionate from where you happen to be standing. Understanding the purpose makes the conversation at the door easier, because it stops being a judgement about your parenting or about your child.
It also means arguing rarely helps, since staff are applying a policy they did not write and cannot vary for one family. Whether your child is well enough for anything at all is a question for you and, where needed, a doctor or health visitor rather than the setting.
Read the policy before you need it
The exclusion policy usually sits in the paperwork handed over at registration, which is precisely the moment when nobody reads anything. The parts worth knowing are which symptoms trigger exclusion, how long an exclusion lasts, and who decides when a child may return. These periods differ between settings and between countries and are revised as national guidance changes, so a rule remembered from a previous child may be out of date.
Also worth knowing is what happens if a child becomes unwell during the day, and how quickly you are expected to collect them. Fees during absence are the detail most likely to surprise people, and they are usually stated plainly in the contract nobody has opened.
The cover plan is the actual product
You cannot predict how many days will be lost, so the useful preparation is the arrangement itself rather than the estimate. A realistic plan names at least two people or options, because the first one will be unavailable at some point during the first term.
Two working parents splitting the days alternately is the arrangement that survives longest, because it stops the load defaulting to one of them. Relatives, a neighbour, a paid emergency arrangement and a day taken as leave are all legitimate entries on that list. Rights to leave for a dependant’s illness exist in many countries in some form and differ enormously, so check what applies where you work rather than assuming.
The first term is the worst of it
A child entering a group setting for the first time meets a large number of ordinary circulating infections over a short period. Parents very commonly describe those first months as an unbroken run, and it usually eases considerably after the first year. Knowing that in advance changes how you choose a start date, and beginning shortly before a critical work period is worth avoiding if you have the choice.
Over a term, a staggered start, where one is offered, spreads both the settling and the exposure across a longer stretch of weeks.
Anything that worries you about how often or how severely your child is unwell is a conversation for a doctor or health visitor, not a scheduling matter.
Telling your employer early
The conversation goes better before the first absence than after the third, because the early version is a plan and the late one sounds like an excuse. Describing the pattern honestly, including that the first months are the heaviest, sets an expectation that can then actually be met. Where flexibility exists, asking for one specific arrangement is far more effective than asking for understanding in general terms.
What usually helps: colleagues with children generally understand immediately, and colleagues without them often understand as soon as the mechanism is explained. Keeping a rough record of the days lost is useful if you later need to renegotiate hours or argue for a different arrangement.
The judgement calls you cannot win
There is a real category of morning in which a child is neither clearly unwell nor clearly fine and a decision must be made in five minutes. Sending a child who then has to be collected costs more than keeping them at home, in both time and goodwill.
What usually helps: deciding by the setting’s stated criteria rather than by how badly you need the day removes some of the guilt from the decision. Where you are genuinely unsure whether a child is well, that is a call to a doctor or a health line rather than a judgement to make alone. Every parent gets this wrong occasionally in both directions, and the staff have seen it happen many times before.
The takeaway
Read the exclusion policy on day one, and build a cover plan with two names in it before you need either.
The thing they remember is rarely the thing you were worrying about.
Questions readers ask
How long will our child be excluded for?
It depends on the setting and the country, and the periods are revised as national guidance changes. Read your own setting’s policy, and ask a health professional about your child specifically.
Can we send a child who seems fine?
Not if they meet the setting’s exclusion criteria, which are about the group rather than your individual child. Sending them usually produces a collection call an hour later.
