Day Care and Colds — Good News!

On average, kids in day care during the first three years of their lives get about twice as many colds as their peers during those years. But each time a child fights off a cold, she develops immunity to that virus.

A study in the February 2002 issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine followed a large group of these children for 13 years. At ages 6 to 11, the children who had gone to day care had only about 1/3 as many colds as their peers who didn’t. Kids who attended day care are spared throughout the elementary school years, when being home sick might make a bigger difference.

Each year in the US there are about 23 million days of school absence from the common cold.