I pay around 50,000 yen a month for daycare, which feels like a small fortune, and yet my one-year-old attends maybe three days before he’s out sick for a week or more. Why? Because parents keep sending their feverish kids to school, as if coughing up a lung in a classroom is the new norm. It’s beyond frustrating, especially when I watch my perfectly healthy child turn into a walking Petri dish overnight.

I get it — some parents say they have “no one to take care of them.” Except here’s the reality: the second your kid shows any sign of fever, the school calls you to pick them up. You take them to the doctor, get a note, rinse and repeat. YOU WILL END UP TAKING CARE OF THEM REGARDLESS. Meanwhile, half the daycare has caught your kid’s little gift, and now I’m home with my own tiny patient who’s sneezing in my face.

“But Americans do it, too!” Not to this level, trust me. I have two teenagers who went through the system in the US, and I never saw something like this.

My child can’t be anywhere near someone who’s sick, because he (and I) catch things like it’s our job. The number of times I’ve been prescribed antibiotics this year alone is… let me check my “Kusuri Techou” (a small book where medication history is kept in Japan)… 3, 4, 5, 6. Yep, 6 times this year. Unreal — it’s like I have a punch card at the local pharmacy.

The worst infections always start the same way. One kid pukes at school, or some child has green boogers oozing down their face, and next thing I know, my son is carrying the exact same plague. We had to endure one especially horrendous bout of vomiting that landed me (Yes, not my son. Me) in the hospital for two days.

Then there was the kid with those lovely neon-green nasal drips who just kept on playing like nothing was wrong. Naturally, my son caught the bug, which led to ear, nose, and throat infections galore, plus bronchitis for good measure. That meant another two-week break from daycare and another chunk of money wasted. This one is the most common, too.

Of course, the cherry on top was the most recent one. We had planned a family trip to Osaka and Tokyo, but daycare informed us that 16 children had shown up with a fever, and one even had Influenza A. My son promptly became feverish, hitting a whopping 40.3°C, and now our vacation is off. It’s been 3 days and counting. Seeing him cry in pain while I try not to lose my mind is an experience I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on the emergency room fiasco. Took him there today and we waited four hours only to be told to come back during regular hours — no tests, nothing. I’ve personally been brushed off in Japanese ERs before, to the point they told me to seek “mental help” for repeated anaphylaxis, which made me $2.6 million richer off the lawsuit.

The incompetence is unbelievable, and sometimes, it’s downright dangerous. Not long ago a schoolgirl died shortly after being discharged from the ER, saying there was nothing wrong with them. The Japanese government will end up spending more on lawsuits than on actual healthcare if things keep going on like this.

So here’s my plea: keep your sick children at home. You’re going to have to take care of them anyway, so why not spare everyone else the misery? There are kids (and grown-ups) with compromised health who can’t handle these infections the way your kid might. A little common sense and empathy would go a long way in keeping everyone healthier — and maybe letting me go on a vacation once in a while.

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