To leave the child in bed...

[Singlebutmarried]

....and be late for school

She’s hardly slept this past week and she’s like a little zombie by about 4pm.

i have anxiety started at a very young age school was a nightmare-it didnt help that i had numerous days off

the more i had the more i didnt want to go in-i know that hasnt happened with every child but i was given the message that it was ok
i left school before my exams and ended up with nothing

Hoof

You may look slightly paranoid but you’ll be cooler. Just moisten the window and the foil sticks perfectly.

Thanks for the damp window tip, we used lots and lots if tape!

Regarding missing school lessons, can I point out that they're not always that challenging for an academically able and they can easily catch up- I certainly could.

I hate this attitude that if you let a small child do something, they won't know better as an adult, completely different expectations for a 5 y.o., 15 y.o and a 25 y.o.

I feel the same about school uniforms

Well said @mullbery . My Ds would not want a day off if his friends were at school. He doesn’t have a good work ethic though he just likes to play with his friends. I work hard too . It isn’t all about been there. It’s about been ready to learn .

All I can say is good for you op if you thought once in a blue moon your child needed extra sleep . I have issues with nt kids been late daily but it happens and I say this as a parent who has not been late in 7 years

*We are talking about (or I was, anyway) monthly duvet days.

What I am saying is that allowing your child very frequent days off in circumstances where it isn't strictly necessary, will have an academic cost. And that is all I said.*

Pengggwyn I think we basically agree, children should aim to be at school all the time? I think the only place we disagree is you implying that monthly duvet days are by definition not 'strictly necessary'. I don't see how you can proclaim that without knowing the child, background or circumstances. Maybe those days off are preferable to a child saying 'I can't cope' and leaving, or other behaviours.

Of course these days off will have an academic cost - whether or not they are strictly necessary! The challenge is tossing up that academic cost against other costs, and only a parent/child can decree that.Ideally I would say schools should be involved too, but my sense is that they can't bring themselves to sanction any flexibility.

Of course sometimes the avoidance needs to be challenged and that is the best thing for the child.

I wish there was more variety of school/timetable for different children, but then I am quite a blue-sky thinker and wish that the whole workplace was more flexible.

coffeeaddict

Well done, you, for being a "blue sky thinker"

We differ in our opinions on this. I believe monthly duvet days are excessive and may point to a certain complacency in parenting, which may or may not be compensated for by the child's natural ability and overall work ethic. It's flying too close to the wind for me. And I am absolutely entitled to that opinion.

YABU - we have to make sure our kids are ready for the increasingly likely misery and pressure of their future working lives by making sure they are equally pressured and miserable at school.

I actually think it's fair enough to allow a child to stay at home if they're completely exhausted is a reasonable thing to do. Because it can mean they're not well or could become unwell if pushed too hard. But only if it's a one-off, not once a month. Children need to learn resilience.

Notthemessiah - I kinda hope my kids will enjoy their future working lives as they do school. It's not a bad habit to get into

• sticking at some thing even when you dont always feel like it. I've never taken time off work cos I felt like it.

YANBU SLEEP IS AMAZING

of course you are entitled to that opinion Pengggwyn. Did someone question that?

I have a different opinion. I think that in the right circumstances, having 'monthly duvet days' can actually help teach children to take responsibility for their own attendance.

You can't choose to go to school unless you also have a choice of not going to school. This is a difficult choice to make and learning to make this choice needs to be introduced age-appropriately etc but by giving the child a limited choice like this they can learn it and become responsible for their own attendance. You need to of course judge your own child's maturity in this and not just go with a blanket rule.

And I further think that spending an hour at home doing some maths and then playing for the rest of the day is educationally more valuable (in some cases) than spending a day at school, particularly in primary. It would boost my child's attainment if I did that on a regular basis.

The statistics say that on average children with lower attendance perform less well than higher attendance children. And indeed, some children with low attendance perform very badly. It is a fallacy to therefore conclude that attending more causes higher performance. Correlation =/ causation.

brilliotic

Yes, coffee questioned it.

She's 7 for crying out loud. We already finished since last week (ireland 8-9 week holidays!) as are most of Europe. what's the big deal if parent at home anyway. My kids were doing diddly squat last couple of weeks at school.

The statistics say that on average children with lower attendance perform less well than higher attendance children. And indeed, some children with low attendance perform very badly. It is a fallacy to therefore conclude that attending more causes higher performance. Correlation =/ causation.

Not being an idiot, I know this. But that correlation is coming from somewhere (it is strong). The most obvious conclusion is that missed content plays a large part in under-attainment. Occam's razor. I am not suggesting for a minute that some students won't under-achieve with excellent attendance, or that some won't over-achieve with poor attendance. I am saying it is a risk I would not be prepared to take as a parent, that my DC will be in the second group. Mine is going to school.

Pengggwyn public school students have weeks and weeks more holidays than state school ones, and yet as a rule get their pick of the best universities and jobs. It's almost as if public schools have realised that a good education is not just about the number of hours spent sitting in front of a teacher...

Poor attendance is generally correlated with all sorts of other socioeconomic indicators that are linked to poor educational outcomes. There is very little indication that it's causative in itself, although obviously the government likes to pretend otherwise.

Oh my goodness Pengggwyn I didn't mean to imply you can't have an opinion! Really confused, not sure where this happened, and I will bow out now.

And we have broadly the same opinion anyway.

Your opinion is: 'I believe monthly duvet days are excessive and may point to a certain complacency in parenting.'

I agree they are excessive. But I would add that they may, on the other hand, point to a child who has 'excessive' needs and parents are therefore being responsible not complacent.

I have excessive needs i.e. not normal. I have a job which requires me to speak in public. I go to bed for a day every time I give a speech. It burns me out. This is not 'normal' and is why I work for myself. (Yes, I have had help, drugs, time in hospital etc. You would never know, to meet me.) This is why I sympathise with the kids who might not be able to cope with constant school and respect their parents who may compensate, despite the academic consequences. But I am only saying this 'may' be the case, not that it is always.

frogsoup

Yes. The internships, private tutors, music lessons, private boating lakes, overseas trips, Saturday prep sessions and cheating help too, I'd imagine.

You can't compare taking out of a standard pot (time actually spent in lessons in state education) through absence to the advantages experienced by private school students. It is delusional.

Occasionally one of my DC has been so exhausted I said they could stay off school.

You have to be careful because they can take the piss They know DH won't let them so often they'll come to me to beg.

Well I'm sure those advantages do help pengggwyn (the skeptical face wasn't really necessary). But equally, that is exactly the reason why you can't possibly tell someone that a monthly duvet day is going to have negatively impacted on their child's education. In aggregate, you can predict something about attainment and attitude to education from school attendance. In any given case, telling a parent that they are going to measurably impact their child's attendance by a monthly duvet day is just nonsense. The kind of mumsnet parent who decides on a very specific rule like that (as opposed to one saying 'yeah, whatever, turn up late or not at all, who cares') is also really quite likely to be the kind of parent whose socio-cultural capital and attitude to education is overwhelmingly likely to mean those kids get to university with an excellent set of results. As, no surprise, is indeed the case here. Your assumption that correlation = causality just doesn't hold up.

My own anecdote: a close family member's parents, I recall, were told very severely by his headmaster that to take them (and sibling) out of school for a three month trip around Europe in years 4 and 6 was going to totally ruin their education. Thirty years later, the 4 As at a-level, Oxford BA and PhD, and 6-figure salary would rather suggest otherwise.

You know your own kids and your (and their) own attitude to education best. You act as you see fit, and if that includes occasional duvet days, then fill your boots.

But equally, that is exactly the reason why you can't possibly tell someone that a monthly duvet day is going to have negatively impacted on their child's education

And I didn't. I said it is likely that it has, a view which is borne out by the statistics. I have repeatedly acknowledged that the poster's child could be an anomaly, but also conveyed my view that it is more likely to be the usual thing: child misses lots of school, child doesn't fulfil their potential. Likely.

Wouldn't have woken her either. I bet she feels miles better OP

To the PP with one duvet day a month, that's bloody brilliant parenting and it's no wonder your children absolutely sailed through school. It's important to them to be able to take time out no questions asked and breathe. Granted if they did that at 25 they would possibly loose their job. However a teenagers stress levels along with hormones and everything else going on makes it a lot harder for them than a functioning adult to deal with their emotions and issues. I think it's easy to forget that they are still children and not fully matured and capable to deal with the real world.

My DC is 2, but I will be allowing a 'mental health day' each term and they either take it or not. I won't ask why and I won't make him tell me anything if he doesn't want too. But the option will be there for him.

I wish I'd have had the option when I was in school.

But they don't have to be an anomaly. Correlation is not causation! If the child in question is bright, committed and with involved parents, then actually their attendance (up to a point) in all likelihood is probably fairly irrelevant. I know children who've missed months - years - of school due to illness and have still caught up and done excellently in exams in the end.

As for 'child doesn't fulfil their potential', that's a rather strange thing to say to someone whose children are off to top universities to study the thing that they want to study.

But they don't have to be an anomaly. Correlation is not causation! If the child in question is bright, committed and with involved parents, then actually their attendance (up to a point) in all likelihood is probably fairly irrelevant.

How can their attendance at school be irrelevant unless, on the days they are absent, someone is homeschooling them? And if they are going to catch up all the work, when? Why take a day off a month if it means you just need to do five hours extra?

And I might want to go to Reading to study Sports Science. That doesn't mean I didn't have the potential to go to Imperial to study Economics. Potential is decided by ability, not appetite.

I don't think we are going to agree on this.

My experience of school (and I say that as someone who did about as well as it's possible to do academically) was that any given day's schoolwork was pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. School to me was a bit like an hour-long episode of Horizon - fine and interesting, but really you could pick up on the substantive content in 10 minutes of reading max, if that. So missing a day now and again was neither here nor there. If a big new concept was introduced, chances are half the class didn't understand it first time round anyway so they'd go through it again next time around. I'm not suggesting every child is like this, or that you could miss weeks at a time at random, but for a bright child, missing a day a month is really neither here nor there.