Day Care

Kids in day care catch more colds

If you have children or work with them, you know that they are prone to endless runny noses and coughs and sniffles, especially during the winter months. Children average between six and ten colds per year. Since respiratory infections typically last for ten to fourteen days, that is a lot of days out of every month with some sort of cold or respiratory infection. For children in day care, parents often feel like the situation is even worse. Children in day care seem to be sick all the time, and this makes some parents feel especially guilty about leaving their children.

There is some truth to this concern. Attending day care has been associated with more respiratory infections, but it is difficult to know what other factors are coming into play. While several studies have found higher rates of respiratory infections in children attending day care, studies have also found that children are sick more days when they have more siblings and when they come from poorer households.

It is also important to track where in a child’s lifespan they get sick. Very large studies show us that children in day care do get sick more often when they first start going, but these infections are less common as time goes on. As the children get older, they have no more infections than those children who are cared for at home, and they seem to have fewer illnesses once they are school-aged. This could be because they have been exposed to more viruses and bugs early on, so their immune system protects them well by the time they are in school. A Danish study looked at more than 135,000 children in Copenhagen, and found that the youngest children attending day care, those under two years old, were at a higher risk of catching colds than children who are cared for at home. In their first six months of going to day care, children younger than two years have much higher rates of getting sick than children who stay home. This is especially true for young children who do not have any other siblings. However, the risk decreases as the children get a bit older.

Parents who are concerned about all of the day care sicknesses need to balance this with what happens when children get sick when they are a bit older. Another study found that children who go to large day care centers when they are in preschool have fewer colds in later years, doing better than their peers in terms of not getting sick and not missing school when they are up to thirteen years old. The day care kids seem to have built up their immunity to common colds and viruses earlier in life, and they benefit from that once school starts, whereas the stay-at-home children start to get exposed to all of those viruses only when they hit school.