If your child or one of their friends has been exposed to the chickenpox or is recovering from Croup it can be difficult to know if you should attend mothers group or go on a play date. Perhaps you're torn between taking a sick day from work to keep your kids home or sending them to day care with the sniffles (or maybe worse).

You don’t want to make other kids sick, and you would hope that other parents would feel the same way because you definitely don’t want your kids to get sick. Being in the know about the specifics of an illness is the best way to protect your child as well as your family & friends from contamination, for example, is an illness contagious and when is the danger period.

First some important information about illness

• Antibiotics are beneficial for fighting bacterial infections and have no effect on viruses
• Many conditions of the respiratory tract affecting children are caused by a virus
• Approximately 90% of the time the common cold is a viral infection
• When ill make sure your child drinks enough fluids, small frequent sips of water & home-made soup or broths for meals.
• Liquids high in sugar such as juice (unless heavily diluted), cordial or sports drinks are not recommended during illness and should be avoided
• Children should never be given Aspirin as it can cause severe side effects
• According to the Royal Children’s hospital and other leading health authorities, cough medicines are not beneficial for treating children with a cough

More respiratory tract infections are being added to this article regularly, here’s some to get you started!

Information in this article has been sources from Raising Children Network, The Royal Children's Hospital, Web MD & Better Health Channel