Yes... and no. I feel strongly that they need to be there in order to keep up with what is going on at school and I work hard to make sure they don't miss school unnecessarily BUT there are some things I feel are necessary that aren't illness, death, funerals or weddings, you know? It hasn't happened since my kids got in elementary school but we had out of state visitors when my daughter was in preschool and we took her out while they were here. You never know what will happen in life and it was important for her to spend time with her grandparents, aunt, uncles and cousins. Extremely important to me. We try to plan our visits around breaks and holidays but if we found out today that the family was coming in from out of state on Monday my kids wouldn't be at school Monday, they would be playing with their cousins and getting smothered with kisses from their grandparents.
I wouldn't hesitate to tell the school exactly why either. I'm positive they would understand completely too!
When I was in elementary school I rarely missed. Junior high was ROUGH on me. I had a lot of peer issues and it caused me major stress to the point of having an ulcer at 14 years old. I would break out in hives too, terrible breakouts. When it got really rough my grandma would let me stay home. I wasn't 'sick' exactly but I was stressed out to the point that being at school was counterproductive. I was better able to get my schoolwork done at home on those days. Grandma would go and pick up a packet of work for me at the end of the day and I'd have my work done and back to school the next day.
My grandma let me stay home on my 16th birthday so my mom and step-dad could take me to the movies. It was a huge deal that they even wanted to because my mom and I were going through a really rough patch at that point (my grandma adopted me when I was 11 months old and raised me but my biological mother, grandma's daughter, is still my 'mom'). My grandma also let me stay home from school when I was 17 and my new baby cousin was coming home from the hospital. I got to go with her and my aunt to pick him up (he had to stay in NICU for a few days). It meant so much to me. :wub:
Our senior year we had 'senior ditch day' and I got to miss school for that too. In fact, my grandma drove me to school and I got out of her car and in to my friend's mom's car (as did like 5 other kids). The principal was standing right there and saw us and he never said a word. In fact, he later told my friend's mom that he thinks kids need to have experiences like that and he was happy we at least had adult supervision while we were skipping.
We have a little more leeway than most, but if our kids were in public/private school, we'd miss days for things other than sickness, because I firmly believe big life events constitute life learning as much as school does. But probably not for a movie, though we do make literature movie-tie ins field trips occasionally for us.
I agree completely, Darcy. I even heard almost those exact words come out of our principal's mouth one year and I know a lot of our teachers feel the same way.
Part of the issue this time is that my other boy is homeschooled and so are 2 of the other boys that are going. I almost said no, but the softy in me caved.
I can totally see why you let him then. Its hard to be left out of a group you are friends with just because you go to school and they are homeschooled.
if they have nothing important going on and if they are younger yes no biggie to me. BUT in high school here they have a strict 5 absence only rule or you fail.
Our highschool had a similar rule when I was in school. It was basically to weed out kids who ditched classes. I missed 20 some days during the school year my senior year alone and they never once questioned my absences. Of course I was sick a lot and my doctor got really good at faxing over a note every time I was in the office for something. They knew I wasn't playing around (exactly... there were the aforementioned times....)
I have to admit though, there were certain classes I ditched. My senior year I was a peer counselor. I could pretty much use that to get out of any class I wanted. I could say that so and so student needed to talk to me. They would even call them out of class for me. We'd get a slip from the counselor's office to excuse us and we'd go walk around campus and talk or whatever. I didn't abuse it but boy I could have! There was a time or two when I missed a class that was frustrating me though.
