Keeping Pre-schoolers out of School

Keeping Pre-schoolers out of School

Children’s immunity is still underdeveloped when they are young. Part of the development of immunity is due to exposure to diseases that help the body create antibodies against harmful micro-organisms. However, schools are also the perfect zone for the quick spread of infections among children. This is primarily because children tend to be in close contact with each other and share a lot of things among themselves. Once one child comes down with an infection, it is effortless for the disease to spread to the rest of the pre-schoolers. A balance between healthy immunity-building exposure and the rampant spread of disease is hard to achieve in young ones at school.

Concerned parents are sometimes quick to keep their children out of school when they receive information about spreading disease. Quarantine is a healthy way to prevent infections from spreading. It is, therefore, understandable when parents keep their children at home to prevent them from getting an infection. However, a balance must be achieved, as some of the diseases acquired by children at a young age help their immunity become more reliable in the end. A case in point is measles and chickenpox, which give immunity from the disease after the first infection. However, a child who has never come down with either of them will always be at risk of contracting it, and the older they get, the more severe the disease would be..

With the aid of the school administration and qualified pediatricians, parents can get information on ‘beneficial’ infections in school. It is also quite tricky to baby-proof the world. In some cases, some infections may warrant preventative quarantine of the children. However, most diseases that go around in school can both be prevented and managed without a child having to miss school days. Therefore, children should be taught on preventative hygiene practices, including what not to share, cough and sneeze covering, hand washing, and general hygiene awareness. Interaction between children is healthy for their development and carries into later years. Keeping children away from others every time there is illness may be counterproductive for both their immunity and how they handle such situations in later life.

Immunization

After birth, a child’s immunity is mostly due to the mother’s antibodies transferred to the child in utero. However, as the child grows, the immunity acquired during pregnancy slowly fades, leaving the child unprotected for the while before they develop their immunity. At this stage, the child’s immunity is boosted by administering required immunizations, which increase their resistance to particular diseases that would otherwise prove fatal if contracted. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), required immunizations work much like car seats and safety belts. In case of an accident, the belt might cause a minor injury, but it will have saved a life.

The human body, with all its general similarities, also functions differently for different people. Some people have suffered from side effects after the administration of a vaccine. The negative information resulting from such occurrences put some parents in the position of fear of immunizations. Some children have indeed reacted negatively to an administered immunization shot, leaving them with unwanted changes in their health. However, the cases of children who got side effects are negligible compared to the number that is successfully protected by immunizations. While every life matters and the side effects can hardly be minimized, refusing to immunize a child for fear of side effects is putting them at higher risk.

Immunizations protect a child’s life from the harmful effects of diseases they have no intrinsic ability to handle at their age. Most vaccines are created from a genetically engineered version of the disease-causing agent. Once administered to the child, their bodies develop antibodies against it, which are then stored in their immunity memory. When they come in contact with the actual micro-organism, their bodies already have what they need to fight it off. Without the immunizations, exposure to the real micro-organisms proves fatal, leaving lasting effects or even death. Refusing required immunizations for fear of side effects is, therefore, counterproductive and puts the child at a higher risk of fatal diseases.

References

Simon, A. K., Hollander, G. A., & McMichael, A. (2015). Evolution of the immune system in humans from infancy to old age. Proceedings. Biological Sciences, 282(1821), 20143085. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.3085

CDC. (2015). Five Important Reasons to Vaccinate Your Child. Vaccines. Retrieved on  March 2, 2020, from https://www.vaccines.gov/getting/for_parents/five_reasons.