The document advises parents to keep their sick child at home to prevent spreading colds and flus at the childcare center. It explains that both colds and flus are virus-related, but only bacterial infections can be treated with antibiotics. The flu is significantly more dangerous, as it can lead to severe health consequences and fatalities.

1. Colds and Flus
www.fridayschildmontessori.com

2. So your child is under the weather
and doesn’t feel like coming along
to join us at Friday’s Child
Montessori.

3. You think that he or she has a cold
or the flu and think that it’s best
that he or she doesn’t go today.

4. Good move – whether it’s a cold or
the flu, it’s best to keep your child
home if he or she is sick so all the
other children at the early childhood
centre don’t get it.

6. Should you be getting in touch with
your local GP?

7. Montessori principles advocate
sharing – but there are some things
that we really, really don’t want you
to share!) But does your child just
have a cold or does he or she have
the flu?

8. Colds and flus have a lot in
common. They are both spread by
viruses rather than bacteria.

9. Viruses and bacteria are lumped
together as “germs” when you’re
explaining about the principles of
hygiene to a child, but they aren’t
the same thing.

10. Bacteria are single-celled
organisms that reproduce by
splitting in the same way that
amoebae do, and there are some
“helpful” bacteria around, like the
ones that live in your insides and
keep your intestines healthy; the
yeasts in bread;

11. and the bacteria that ferment wine,
cheese and yoghurt. Viruses, on the
other hand, reproduce by sneaking
into your cells and using their
mechanisms to reproduce – they
squirt their DNA into the nucleus of
one of your cells,

12. like a cuckoo laying eggs in another
bird’s nest. Unless you count the
viruses that are used for genetic
modification (and that’s a
controversial topic), there are few
helpful ones, if any.

13. At this point, you might be asking,
so what?

14. Why is it important to know that
colds and flus are spread by
viruses instead of bacteria?

15. Well, it’s only bacterial infections
that you can fight with
antibiotics.

16. Antibiotics don’t do diddley-squat to
help deal to viral infections. In fact,
if you try fighting a virus with
antibiotics, the only thing you’re
going to do is increase the chance
of superbugs developing,

17. superbugs being dangerous bacteria
that are resistant to antibiotics. A
number of worried parents have tried
asking the doctor for antibiotics when
their child
has a nasty cold, but
this isn’t
the best thing.

18. Both the cold and flus share a
few symptoms and they both are
spread by various insanitary
habits such as not washing
hands properly,

19. sharing food and drink items,
picking noses and so forth.
However, the flu is a lot more
dangerous than a cold. People can
die from the flu –

20. look at what happened in a lot of
the Western world shortly after
World War 1 (as if enough people
hadn’t died already!):

21. fatalities of this particular strain of
the flu are in the millions, making it
about as big a medical disaster as
the Plague in the Middle Ages or
AIDS in Africa today.

22. Keep your child away from colds
and flus. If symptoms occur, consult
your GP.

23. A friendly reminder by
www.fridayschildmontessori.com