Exposure Notices

The last few weeks in the daycare business have been down right interesting. Within a week's time we had a child with chicken pox and two more with head lice. This seems a little odd considering there are only 7 kids enrolled. It's not like it's a classroom of 35. And besides that, the chicken pox kid had been vaccinated. When I got the chicken pox phone call, I hung up feeling sad for Allison and then I realized that as the director/teacher/owner I should do some something. But what? Where is my secretary who is in charge of all that? Oh yeah, that's me too. So my job now was to notify my parents that their precious child has been exposed to some ugliness in the world. And if they hadn't been in my house, it probably wouldn't have happened. So I got to work writing an e-mail that would somehow communicate information as well as care and concern. I hated the thought of being the first person in their lives to give them this news. Guess what; vaccinations aren't guarantees. Little bugs crawl from head to head. You don't need to share combs, brushes, and bows for that to happen. It was especially difficult because the e-mails came back to back. I tried to end the second one with a little light-heartedness. I have no idea if it was effective or not. Once again, time is our friend. With the passage of time I have stopped by psychosomatic head scratching. The chicken pox kid has healed and thankfully the disease did not spread to the 7 month old baby. The affected heads of hair have been treated. I have had time to thoroughly clean the house and put into effect a couple new rules including assigned nap mats. I am feeling more in charge when the unexpected happens and more responsible as these children's caretaker. I am definitely in loco parentis (in place of parents) in this job. There's a good reason that I am accidentally called Mom by my little ones.