Period pain proof required for school sick days

Well aren't you lucky.

Are you really so unaware that other people are affected differently??

I suffered from my early teens and was finally diagnosed with endometriosis at the age of 46. It takes the absolute piss it really does.

The pill isn't the only preventative medication, metformin can in many cases be much more effective. I had horrendous and crazy periods where I would bleed for a month every 4-6 months, 6 months on metformin and I was regular as clockwork, weight dropped, and I conceived easily.

Sorry, I know this is off topic

I wish I'd never felt so ill that I've had to take a day off sick with a cold. Sadly I have. As has my child from school. I wonder if these policies are written by people who only get a bit of a runny nose for a cold and think the rest of us are having a whale of a time watching daytime tv and sucking a lozenge

It's perfectly reasonable for a person to choose not to use tampons and so not be able to do swimming lessons that week. Why should people be forced to use sanitary protection they don't want to.

I gave birth twice without pain relief. Not even paracetamol, let alone gas and air. I cooked dinner using my contractions as a timer. For my first birth, I was waiting until the pain was worse than bad period pains. I had a baby in in my arms without reaching that level of pain. So if you think that girls should just power on and go to school with period pains, maybe women should also just power through childbirth and not use it as an excuse to get out of cooking. Does that sound ridiculous and unfair? Yes, because it is ridiculous and unfair, just like the suggestion that period pains are no big deal and not a reason to stay off school or work.

I did read once that women who report severe period pain are the most likely to have drug free births, presumably because they are used to having their experience of very similar pain downplayed and having to carry on through the pain.

One thing I’ve realised as someone who suffers with “bad” periods is that there will unfortunately always be other women who don’t have bad periods who will swarm in on these types of convos to try and invalidate your experience and tell you it can’t possibly be that bad 🙄

Notice the head teach is a man 🙄
I used to get period pain so severe I’d get nauseous with him and actually vomit and I could sleep for 12 hours a night on those weeks. I wouldn’t send a child to school in that condition but also wouldn’t need to seek medical advice. Bizarre to ask for proof of period pain. If you run a school full of teenage girls then you have to accept this as a fact of life or perhaps this headmaster needs to attend a few more sex education classes

How is the view from up there on your high horse?

This sounds like straight up sex discrimination.

Men can't get periods so it is specifically targeting female students.

Unless they require proof for every single ailment for every day off, then again this is discrimination.

On top of that you can't prove pain so they'd have to be very lenient on proof, like a letter from a parent lenient. No doctor is going to have the time to make an appointment to write a sick note for 3-5 days or the odd day here or there when you can self certify for a week.

Our school does this. They are requesting a doctors note when girls are on their periods to allow them to go to the toilet during the day when needed and having time of school for periods related issues will be an instant unauthorised absence.

The doctors are refusing to provide notes. It's a mess.

It lies partially with the pressure from outside schools, but most of them aren't going to this idiotic level of excess.

As an 11 year old my periods were horrendous. I used to take paracetamol, ibuprofen, use one of those magnetic pain relief things, and take those instant hand warmer things to have on my tummy all day. And I would still be in absolute agony. I remember once passing out from the pain. But there was no medical problem, I just had painful periods. They eased as I got older and now I have very little pain. It doesn't surprise me in the least that the head teacher is a man.

Yes their bodies are their own. If they don't want to take meds/use tampons then that is their right, but the poster was stating that their parents are stopping them from using them in 'their area', which is very different to girls making a choice.

This.

I'm off NOW with a cold. I didn't even get dressed yesterday, only got out of bed at 2.30, and even that was only because I absolutely had to get something to eat and drink so I could take my daily meds. I am not the kind of person to give in easily, or to drop out of doing things - but this cold has floored me, and several other people I know who've had it too.

Children should be taught to know their bodies and their health, and to be kind to themselves. Better to have a couple of days off than keep dragging themselves in and making recovery take even longer.

Bet you never made a noise through childbirth either?

Slow clap....

Actually, even if I hadn't found using tampons hard - it's not right to tell girls they have to do it. They should have the right not to do it for whatever reason.

Please stop blaming ‘headteachers’ or SLT for this current clamp down on attendance. Do you honestly think they have all nationally decided to enforce these rules? It’s the DfE pouring on pressure, which will be enforced by local authorities and Ofsted. Don’t follow their directives? Then you’ll be put in special measures, be forced down a route you don’t want to go.

That said, since COVID, attendance HAS become a massive issue and it does need a solution. Parents aren’t supporting schools (SOME not all parents) and it’s massively affecting student’s learning, they are failing in education and it’s reaching crisis point when aligned with the huge behavioural and social issues that are occurring.

Is this crackdown on attendance the solution? Absolutely no, but can anyone come up with any other solution?

These threads always attract the 'I haven't had a sick day since 1999, and that was when I'd been run over by three buses and both my arms and both my legs were hanging off' posters. I've been into work while miscarrying, worked (FH) with pneumonia, and worked from the recovery room after a GA, but I wouldn't dream of assuming others should do likewise.

UK schools' attitudes to attendance are up there with their attitudes to uniform. Completely bonkers.

The poster probably meant "toughen up".
Or "power through".
Of course this stuff is different from woman to woman, also different as we age.
Not unbearable though.

I don't think girls should have to take medication just to join in with PE. And as someone who found using tampons really difficult until well into my twenties I'm not keen on the idea that girls should be forced to use them either. I don't think it's unreasonable to provide PE options that can be done while wearing a pad.

This policy is absurd but more importantly it’s massive overreach by the school/state. The health and education of children is the parent’s responsibility. If I think my dd or ds is too sick for school no bozo at school is going to tell me otherwise.

Until I took myself off to the GP at 15 and asked to be put on the pill I spent 2-3 days of every month blacking out and vomiting due to period pain. I'd try to go into school and end up fainting in class and flooding through a pad in an hour in the first day of my period and would then be sent home. I remember one of the PE teachers telling me that exercise was good for period pain when all I wanted to be was at home on the sofa with a hot water bottle and some mefenamic acid tablets which I couldn't keep down. I understand that in some circumstances powering through is the right option but not when you are in severe pain or very unwell with a nasty cold.

Absolutely. I have never suffered like you and others on here, but SLT are being completely unreasonable.

I don’t want to get off topic but I think the downsides/risks of the pill are massively undersold and the benefits (which are mostly benefits to men of not needing to use contraception themselves!) are oversold. I actually think it’s scandalous that modifying your hormones is essentially the default for young women. The impact on the water system will become increasingly clear in the future too. Of course if girls/women want it it should be available but no way should it be a first line treatment for something like period pain.