How to Properly Care for A Sick Child While Keeping Your Family Healthy

When one kid gets sick, every mom braces for the dreaded spread.
If you’ve got multiple kids in your household, you instantly imagine that your entire month is going to be spent caring for your sick family members. Why? Well, viruses tend to spread quickly. And we’re all being reminded of that now with the current COVID pandemic. And when a virus spreads, there tends to be an incubation period before you start showing symptoms. So when kid one brings home a virus, he’s on the road to recovery around the time the next kid gets sick. So, how do you properly care for a sick child without risking everyone’s health?

There are a few ways you can keep that child comfortable while keeping the rest of the family safe. Let’s explore.

Quarantine in the home

One of the most impactful things you can do to stop the spread of a virus in your own home is to separate the sick person from everyone else as much as possible. If your kids share a room, consider different sleeping arrangements to provide separation between them.

If they are in separate rooms, there will be less risk of spreading a virus through shared surfaces. You’ll have enough disinfecting to do that you don’t want to have to worry about everything your sick child touches.

Designate one caretaker

If at all possible, designate one person to care for the sick child. This alone won’t guarantee others won’t get sick, but it will help. If you can be the one to handle giving medicine and food and spending quality time with your sick child, that can limit everyone else’s exposure.

Disinfect common surfaces

Keep some disinfectant wipes in the bathroom, so you can easily wipe down the toilet, sink, and doorknobs after the sick child uses the room. Do the same for the kitchen or any other common areas, but do your best to limit your child’s use of common areas while sick.

Reinforce the importance of handwashing

There’s a reason why hand soap became a scarce commodity when the current pandemic hit. Experts recommend washing your hands often and well to avoid spreading a virus. Teach all your kids (not just the sick ones) how to properly wash their hands and encourage them to do it often. To make it more fun, you may require that they sing the ABC’s or a handwashing song until they’re done.

Focus on overall health

Up your family’s intake of vegetables and probiotics during this time (and beyond). And if you have older kids, this is a good time to talk to them about health and immunity. Now more than ever, we’re seeing how health can impact immune health — and why that’s important.

It’s a good time to talk about teens and drugs, and how substance abuse can weaken the immune system and make people more susceptible to primary and secondary infections.

When illness strikes your home, you might feel powerless. But the truth is that there are things you can do to keep your family well. There are no sure things, but you can definitely limit the risk.