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It's been a hard flu season for everybody, our pediatrician tells us. Harder than last year. For my twin daughters, every little cold is scary because of asthma-related issues that loom. I am always in a panic, waiting for their breathing to become labored. We've been to the emergency room more than once for breathing issues, and it's not fun for anybody.

So, for us, it's really important to avoid getting sick in the first place. But, with two kids in a morning preschool program, it's basically impossible.

Our preschool teachers tell us that parents send their kids to school sick and then won't come pick them up early when they're languishing during the day. One of my daughters' teachers told me that she had recently called a parent whose daughter had a messy diarrhea attack. The mom wouldn't come pick up her kid. The mother said that it must have been something she had eaten, and couldn't her daughter just lie down for a little while there at school?

As a classroom teacher, I used to find the same thing. Kids would burst into fevers four hours after they were dropped off. Their parents, hoping for the best, had loaded them up with Tylenol before school. Sometimes, kids would come to school, put their books down and then go throw up. Their parents hadn't even hit the freeway yet after dropping them off.

Whatever happened to the no-fever-for-24-hours rule? That's what I remember when I was a kid, and that's the rule my husband and I use when our kids are sick. Yes, it means falling behind in our work; yes, it means doing superhuman parenting coordination; and yes, we are exhausted. What a difference a day makes.

I'll admit to not being pure in thought here. It's tempting to send the girls to school when my husband and I are facing another day at home with rammy kids who only have a low-grade fever, another day of asking co-workers to cover, another day of asking people to move around deadlines to help us out, maybe even another day of lost wages when the sick time runs out. (And I can't even imagine the stress on families that don't have the luxury of a work policy that includes sick leave. Waiting 24 hours for the kids to have no fever, then, is also a luxury. What a difference a day makes, indeed.)

On the tough days, hopefully one of us is always strong enough to remember our rule.