Find someone to take care of them. You are at work and your day-care provider calls. She says that her father just died and that you need to come get your child in the next hour. You can't leave work, so you have to call to find someone to get your child and take care of her. Discuss balancing taking time off work to tend to a child's illness.
Most jobs allow a parent to take sick time to care for a sick child.
But, there are a limited number of days an employee can take. Every time a parent uses a sick day to care for a sick child, that is one less day he can take if the child is sicker at a later time or the parent gets sick at a later date. This is an area that will require decision making on the part of the parent. Ask students to provide different situations in which they took time off or did not take time off when their child was sick. Ask how sick the child was, and then have the group discuss and decide what they would do in that situation.