Back to school, without the first-term illness cycle.

Before term starts

1. Immunisations up to date. Bring the card. If you have missed some, you do not start again — you pick up where it stopped.
2. Eyes. A child who cannot see the board is frequently labelled inattentive or slow. Eye screening is quick and settles the question.
3. Hearing. Same argument. Glue ear after repeated colds is common and easily missed.
4. Teeth. Toothache is a leading cause of missed school and of children who will not eat properly.
5. Growth and weight. A plot on the chart tells you more than a number does.
6. Genotype. If you do not know your child's, find out. It changes how a fever or a pain crisis is handled.
7. A written plan for asthma, allergy, epilepsy or sickle cell — give it to the school; a copy in your handbag helps nobody.

What the school needs from you in writing

A verbal mention to a teacher in September will not survive to a supply teacher in February. Put it on paper, give it to the school office, and keep a copy.

• Conditions your child has, in plain words.
• Medicines, doses, and when they are given.
• What an emergency looks like for your child specifically.
• What the school should do, in order, and at what point to call an ambulance.
• Two phone numbers that will actually be answered.
• Allergies, and whether they are severe.

Asthma at school

• A spare reliever inhaler and a spacer kept at school, in date.
• Staff who know where it is and that a child having an attack must never be sent to fetch it alone.
• A written plan: how many puffs, how often, when to call for help.
• Permission for your child to carry their own if they are old enough.
• Triggers noted — harmattan dust, smoke, exercise, a cold.

See the nebuliser guide if one has been prescribed at home.

Sickle cell at school

• Free access to water, and permission to drink in class.
• Free access to the toilet, without asking in front of everyone.
• Not being kept out in extreme heat or cold, and warmth during harmattan.
• Pain taken seriously and acted on quickly, not treated as attention-seeking.
• Understanding about absences, and help catching up rather than penalties.
• Medicines, including any daily preventive treatment.

What travels round a classroom

The bag

• Water. A refillable bottle. Children stop drinking at school because the toilets are unpleasant, and then get headaches and constipation.
• A snack that is not biscuits. Groundnut, banana, boiled egg, moimoi, coconut, roasted corn in season.
• A lunch that survives till break without a fridge: jollof and chicken, beans, moimoi, sandwich with egg. See eating well this month.
• Hand sanitiser, for when there is no water.
• Their own towel or wipes, not a shared one.
• Inhaler and spacer, if prescribed.
• A note of your phone numbers in the bag itself as well as on file.

Keeping the bag light

A school bag should be under about a tenth of your child's body weight, worn on both shoulders, with the heaviest items closest to the back. Persistent back or shoulder pain in a child is not something to accept as normal, bring them in.

The part nobody puts on the checklist

Term brings pressure as well as germs. Watch for a child who has stopped wanting to go, who complains of stomach ache every morning and is fine by ten, who has become withdrawn or unusually clingy, or whose sleep has changed. Those are worth asking about gently — bullying, anxiety and difficulty keeping up all present exactly like that. See the mental health clinic.

Common questions