chicken pox Follow

By Michele Bender, Special to Lifescript Back-to-school time means new teachers, rekindled friendships and homework. But along with the ABCs and 123s come parasites and illnesses. Learn how to protect your children. Plus, test your kid-safety IQ with our quiz… School can put your child to the test in more ways than a math exam. It can stress even the healthiest immune systems with lice, chicken pox, impetigo, pink eye, cold sores and this year, the life-threatening H1N1 flu. “H1N1 may make this an eye-popping winter because we’re not used to seeing disease as widespread as this flu is likely to be,” says Paul Horowitz, M.D., a pediatrician at Discovery Pediatrics in Valencia, Calif. and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) spokesman. Such illnesses as flu and colds and even parasites spread easily in school “because kids are in such close contact, sharing things like pencils and keyboards and touching the same doorknobs, desks and water fountains,” says Christopher Tolcher, M.D., a spokesman for the AAP and clinical assistant professor of pediatrics at the USC School of Medicine in Los Angeles. What should you do if your child comes down with one of these popular schoolyard bugs? Read on to find out what they are, how to treat them and what you need to watch for: 1. Flu (both seasonal and swine flu) What it is: This year, moms will have to watch out for both seasonal and H1N1 flus. They’re just different strains of the influenza virus, but the H1N1 virus seems to target young adults (under 25) and children, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says. “The seasonal flu changes a little bit year after year so our immune systems are pretty good at recognizing it and destroying it,” Horowitz says. But we don’t have the defenses to deal with H1N1. Both viruses may cause fever, muscle aches, joint pain, cough, fatigue, stuffy/runny nose, sore throat and other amplified cold symptoms. (Less common are dizziness and vomiting.) The diseases spread through airborne droplets when infected people sneeze or cough without covering their mouths or if they touch a contaminated surface. The respiratory droplets can travel three to four feet in the air and live for several hours outside the body.