To keep him off school when he's totally fine?

[TheVeryHungryDieter]

DS's school has just announced they are doing a grandparents day event. The children will be welcoming their grandparents to school and giving tours of their classrooms and the school will do tea/coffee and the children can spend time with people close to them. Parents are not invited and as it's a local school (for local people!) there are so many grandparents interested they'll have to issue tickets. Close family friends in a grandparent-style role may come if a grandparent isn't available.

DS has four living grandparents, which is lucky. BUT.

My mum is carer for my dad with cancer. They live in Ireland.

DH's dad is carer for his mum with dementia. They also live in Ireland.

None of them can travel and we keep up relationships by being the ones who do all the shuttling back and forth.

We have no close family friends here that DS would know. We both work. Most of our close friendships fell away when we had children, as the first of the group to do so. Most of our friends now are other parents or colleagues, but again not people DS would know well or at all.

There is no one available for DS. And the kicker is, it's happening on his birthday.

He's turning 6. He's going to ask me why all his friends grandparents came and his didn't, because he's nearly 6, the school is making a big deal of it and it will be very obvious. We're one of the very few couples here where neither of us is British, so most kids have someone on at least one side.

I'm thinking of keeping him off school and doing something fun for his birthday instead. Is it a daft idea? Should I speak to the teacher? am I being pfb about my pfb?

Teach him to get on with it.

Yep, he’s 5 nearly 6 after all - time to toughen up and get with the programme, be a good worker bee with no feelings about anything. Is it any wonder our kids have unprecedented levels of mental health difficulties when the answer to something that might cause distress is “get on with it”.

God forbid a child might struggle with the absence of poorly grandparents, feel left out in a class lesson designed to recognise grandparents and want to talk about it for as long as it takes, he should really just deal with it. Or not.

Lots of people have explained it would be upsetting for their child due to being singled out as a minority / bereavement of grandparents being common / gp living elsewhere / estranged GP / illness / work.

They're 5, why not just handle it sensitively, no need to highlight what some kids are missing out on. Just have a grown ups day. Why not just be kind. No need to teach resilience about this particular issue, it's too painful for some, unnecessary and easily avoidable.

I don’t the think it’s right that you should just assume that the school will adequately support the children with no gps going because they will have done it before. How sensitively these things are approached can vary widely.
I remember going to the nativity when one of mine was in infants. There were obviously some parents who couldn’t attend due to work. At the end the head teacher said that any of the children who could see their grown up in the audience could go and give them a hug. Cue about 10 children left sitting in the stage either in tears or fighting them back.
I would definitely try and find out what the plan is to make sure that the children without an adult have a productive and fun day too in the ops situation. Or I would just put on my best old lady sweater and attend myself 😂

Yeah provide some coloring or reading for all the poor grandparentless kids while the others have a great time showing their beloved GP around the school. Sounds fair.

Based on experience Ken or just making it up? I'm surprised you said colouring or reading, why not say locked in a dark cupboard? Would have been just as likely.

In my experience, kids who don’t have a grown up do the same activity as the others but work on their own - so with stay and learn sessions, the parents sit with their child during the lesson and kids that don’t have a parent/carer attending just get on with the lesson. More by luck than design some parents might chat to adultless children in the class.

Colouring or reading wouldn’t be unusual activities for children if others were doing something directly with their adult.

I'd take him out at lunchtime OP if I were you - let him spend the morning with his friends and then you, him and DD go for a lovely lunch and a play somewhere. It's somehow more exciting if he goes in for the morning! Would it phase him if you did it as a surprise?

And I say this as a (former) primary teacher. I still remember the birthday where my mum and dad kept me off for school for the day so I could go to the little tack shop and pick out new riding gear. It was a special day, made even more special by the fact that I was never allowed off school normally!

Keep him off and spend some time doing grandparenty related things: phone them up, look at old photos of them and chat about memories, make and send them cards, etc.
Then get on with enjoying the rest of his birthday!

Keep him off. Enjoy his birthday. It's one day, and he's only 5. Tell the school why!

We had one of these, and DD 5 took in our retired next door neighbour, who was delighted to be asked. She was a granny, but just not ours

When we lived in the USA when kids were little, DS (then 3) took his English granny into Preschool one day, as his "Show and Tell".

Could you ask one of his friend's mums if your DS could 'share' his friend's GP, and explain why.

Not GPs but family craft day at our school. Quite a few parents not able to come- kids did all the same things- baking, card making etc but with a TA or teacher. Unless the school is shit- which i doubt - a similar thing will happen at the OPs school. No-one is going to expect a 6 year old to sit read a book for the afternoon by themselves while the rest of the class do lovely activities.