Sick of sick.

This blog post is brought to you by Purell - "Only Purell helps kids reach higher..."

During the month of January, I was out of my classroom 32% of the time with sick kids. This means I had a sub, usually a different one each day, with my 'challenging' students a third of the time they were in class.

This started with a round of strep in early October which we cleared up quickly and emerged from relatively unscathed. Since Thanksgiving, we have had illness knocking on our door, prowling around our home, stalking us - every 3 weeks. The majority of my blog posts seem to be about sick kids.

Although this is frustrating, to say the least, it's not nearly as troublesome as some of the comments and implications that have been directed my way: "Boy, your kids sure are sick a lot. Have you had them checked out?" "Gee, you guys sure get hit A LOT. What's going on?" "Wow, sick again? You can't catch a break!"

Perhaps I am just paranoid but I am wondering if there are CPS calls being made behind my back since sick kids is CLEARLY a sign of poor parenting.

For the record, my kids eat balanced meals, take multivitamins, brush their teeth, go to bed at 7:15 and wash their hands. I wash their clothes, change their sheets, and bathe them regularly. They are just massive face touchers, as am I. I have just built up the teacher/mommy immune system so I don't get stricken with everything like they do.

Because I was starting to wonder if I needed some kind of genetic testing to check for Immune Compromised Disorder (I'm confident there isn't such a thing as ICD. Just sounds smart), I did the next best thing and googled the following: Why do my kids get sick so much?

Here is what I found...

It is normal for young children to have six to eight upper respiratory tract infections and two or three gastrointestinal infections each year. Children in school and day care can often have more (often called day care syndrome). As your child gets older, his immune system will strengthen and he will build up immunity to many common infections and he will get sick less often.

6-8 and 2-3?!? So my kids aren't even in the 80th %ile when it comes to illness! HA! Take THAT Munchausen By Proxy haters! We just need to use more Purell - or 'hanitizer' as E calls it. Maybe a Purell bath now and then in the winter months would keep Mr. Fever Bug at bay.

Every morning I pray that I would be teachable and quick to learn the lessons God has for me through all of this. The relentlessness of the viral attacks is maddening enough that this has to be some kind of refining process for me. Let's hope I learn it fast before my sick days run out!