As students return to school this month, classrooms, gymnasiums and lunchrooms become packed with students. So, a child coming home with a runny nose or a sore throat starts to become a familiar sight for parents.
Dr. Shelly Senders, president and CEO of Senders Pediatrics in South Euclid, and Dr. Julie McClave, a pediatrician at Akron Children’s Mayfield Heights pediatric practice, discussed the best ways to keep children healthy this upcoming year.
“Handwashing is super important,” McClave said. “I know the schools always remind kids of that, but washing your hands before meals and after playing on the playground, or using any shared supplies in the classroom can be an important way to make sure they’re not exposing themselves to germs that might be around them. If you’re not able to wash your hands with soap and water, hand sanitizer can be a good substitute.”
Senders said there are several ways that people, particularly children, can improve both their physical and mental health to make it more difficult for them to contract sicknesses.
“The first is exercise,” he said. “When you exercise, what you’re doing is you’re pumping blood to healthy parts of your body, to your brain so that you can concentrate better, and to your lungs so that you can oxygenate better. The second is sleep. Children at different ages need to get different amounts of sleep. Children under 10 years old typically need about 11 hours of sleep, between 10 and 11 need about 10 hours of sleep, 12-13 need about 10 hours of sleep, and then 14 year olds and above really do well with about eight hours of sleep.
“Sleep helps improve your immune system, so you’re less likely to get infections, and it helps with reducing stress, reducing anxiety and improving mood.”
Nutrition is also important, Senders said, and the old adage that breakfast is the most important meal of the day is backed by science. Proteins, such as eggs, meat, peanut butter, oatmeal, Greek yogurt and protein bars, are crucial because it releases guar slowly to the brain, helping with concentration and improving the immune system.
“One of the things I tell my patients is that they should be trying to eat as many real foods as possible,” he said. “I define real foods as fewer than 10 ingredients. Items that have 20 ingredients are probably not real foods, and most of them are processed and have a lot of added sugar. Added sugar was studied in one of the largest meta analyses, which is a study of over 7,000 studies, and they found that added sugar is associated with three medical conditions: obesity, heart disease and mood disorders.”
Parents may struggle over when to keep a child home and when it is OK to send them back to school.
McClave said that if a child has a fever of above 100.4 degrees, that means it is time to stay away from school until they go at least 24 hours without the fever.
“If they’re coughing, vomiting or having diarrhea, those are always good reasons to keep them home, at least until they’re feeling better and those symptoms have subsided,” she said. “Kids are notorious for not necessarily covering their cough or not always washing as well as we’d like them to after using the bathroom. If they’re having an increased number of symptoms, it’s always good to keep them home until they’re no longer having those.”
Laughter or “about 15 to 20 minutes of giggle therapy a day” is another way to help a child’s physical and mental health, Senders said.
“It turns out that the 52 muscles that express a smile actually release the same chemical found in Zoloft, Prozac and things like that,” he said. “It’s going to boost your immune system and help protect your mood and reduce anxiety.”
Colds are inevitable, McClave said, and it would be unusual for children not to find themselves with some minor symptoms throughout the school year. To be respectful to peers and teachers, she said to pack extra tissues and hand sanitizer.
“Anytime you blow your nose or wipe your nose, you should probably wash your hands or hand sanitize if you don’t have access to soap and water,” she said. “Coughing into your elbow or coughing into a tissue as opposed to your hand helps decrease the spread of germs to other people and surfaces around you. And just making sure that you’re respectful of other people’s spaces, and keeping your distance.”
According to a 2021 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on average, children get sick from respiratory viruses about six to eight times per year. And in the 2024–25 school year, there were entire school districts in at least 10 states that closed due to influenza outbreaks, according to NBC News.
That’s why Senders said that parents should trust their wisdom when deciding on allowing ta possibly sick child to attend school.
“If they look at their child and they say, ‘This is not the type of kid I would want to be exposed to my own child,’ then they shouldn’t send them to school,” he said. “On the other hand, if they have a minor illness, and especially if they had a reasonable night sleeping, then they likely are OK, and you can send them to school.”
McClave said that recent flu seasons have been rough, with a peak around November and December, so she stressed the importance of getting a flu shot before the end of October.
“That can be a really helpful way of mitigating your risk of getting severe illness from the flu, especially if you’re high risk, have asthma or there’s other high-risk people in your family,” she said. “A shot can help decrease the severity of symptoms if you are to get the flu.”
