deamon status

[user at domain.invalid]

Currenly I have a python script that forks a child process and exits.
I have also written a shell script (chkonfig compatible) to stop,
start, restart and get the status of the daemon. The problem is
"status" just returns the pid of the daemon proccess,
but what I want to do is call the python script with command
line options for checking that status without starting another
daemon process. Is this possible?