It’s MY decision as a parent NOT the schools

[IfeelSoIll]

I’m really quite angry
My dd (secondary school) has been unwell quite a bit lately, some very nasty viral illnesses. Been to gp and nothing underlying just bad luck it seems.

Anyway, yet again she returned yesterday feeling grim so had an early night but barely slept this morning throat was horrendously red and sore. Very congested and extremely nasty runny nose.
Generally tired and achy but no temperature.

School have called and told us bring her in. That THEY will keep her there and administer paracetamol and they will decide if she needs to go home. That in future if she’s ill to get her up and send her in and they will then decide.

AIBU to think that it’s cruel to send a visibly very unwell child to school just to prove who makes the decision about whether they are well enough to be in or not ?

Your DD may well be feeling rough as hell but the number of parents that use sore throat and runny nose as an excuse is ridiculous, that and stomach ache, sorry to say the school probably don't believe you

And therein lies the problem.
Feel a bit shit one morning? Don't go to school then.
Feel a bit shit when you're at uni? Don't go to your lecture then.
Feel a bit shit when you're an adult? Don't go into work then.

Feel a bit shit when you're a lone parent of babies and/or toddlers?
Get out of bed and get on with it. But Oops, you've had no training for that.

Of course I'm not talking about children who are genuinely too ill to function. They need to be medically evaluated, obviously.
It's a fine balance though, between can't and don't want to.

I hope you told them where to go! The decision lays with you, the parent, not the school. I also hope you asked them which medical school they attended and passed out in to be able to make a medical decision.
I wouldn't send a child of mine to school if i knew they were genuinely ill and if a teacher / head had anything to say about it, well, they would have been needing medical attention for stitches by the time the sharp end of my tongue had finished with them.

@flagrancedirect I don’t think anyone is on about feeling a bit ‘shit’. From OP it seems her child was generally unwell and school have made a mountain over a molehill.

I think that’s the real underlining problem, people assume things. Such as lone parents are tired and can’t be bothered, I’m not a lone parent and I get tired. I think all parents in general get tired, it’s exhausting some days, but we all get on with our day. Or because a person seems ill ‘often’ and doesn’t do something because they cannot, that it’s laziness, when in reality they need help and guidance not judgment.

I guess UK schools should start wards, complete with beds and with nursing staff

I find that a bit ironic. UK schools have high non-attendance rates compared with countries where it's considered extremely fortunate to have a school to go to. Attendance in third world countries is virtually 100%. Child survival rates, not so much.

Those schools should have the beds and nursing staff. Oh, and some doctors and access to medication.

I know. I didn't want to go there. But really, we should have a little think about how fortunate we are.

Yanbu, i dont give a shit why schools do this but they can shove it up their backsides.

I was ill in high school back in the good old days when parent judgement was trusted. I was in and out of hospital for a year, never got a diagnosis in the end and it cleared itself. I have a masters degree now so it didnt harm my education that much

If you haven’t done so already it might be a good idea to start writing down her symptoms by day plus any medical appointments etc. That way you have some kind of record if things escalate with the school. Schools are germ factories and your DD could be picking up everything that goes round and her immune system just isn’t recovering each time. It’s a hard cycle to break and I hope for all your sake’s that’s all it is. Do you think the school have considered the possibility that serious illnesses rairly happen overnight and there are usually signs but they are not always obvious or detectable? Are they helping things by sending work home and is she doing it? If that’s the case other than other than their own attendance stats what’s their problem?

I do however agree, that there is a thin line between can’t and don’t want to. But I also believe as parents we are more untuned with our children’s capabilities, if our child is unwell and we think rest is best for them, then do what you think is right. Education is personally one of the things I care least about, first and foremost it will always be physical and mental health, then the child’s happiness (obviously to a certain extent, I’m not saying if the only way to make a child be happy is to give them all the time of in the world, to then do that) then education.

She's year 7 - most of that is just pissing around anyway! I was only talking to some family members yesterday about what a nightmare one of them had had just to get a day off to attend a family funeral (which included an 8 hour round trip) and this was for a primary school child!

Of course there will be some who take the piss but there's no need to alienate those with good reason

Each day I home school feels even more like a blessing.YANBU.

I will not send a kid into school who is in my opinion too sick for school. I do not enable being off school for nothing, but if they meet my criteria and judgment for being too sick for school, that's my call as the person who is on the ground and has known them from birth, and knows their entire life and health history, to make

And that's fine, and it's your call. But if it happens so often that your child's attendance drops below 80% for a year or more, then you have to acknowledge that your child might have an unusual and serious health problem. And you might take steps to find out why your child is so ill, and so often.

On the other hand, plenty of children, to my knowledge, will swing the lead to get a few days off school. Some parents get sucked in and enable it. Most don't. Absolutely if your child is obviously smacked by a virus then it's bloody obvious. If they can't get out of bed and are not interested in playing computer games or watching TV then they are feeling really unwell.

If they say they are ill, and hear you call into school to tell them they are not going in. Then get out of bed, eat breakfast, then break out with computer games in their pyjamas, then they are taking the piss and swinging the lead.

To most parents, and I include everybody who reads this, it's pretty obvious if your child is really unwell. But in my many years of living on this earth, and seeing lots and lots of babies and toddlers and teens and tweens and and older children. It's sort of innate in them to want to have a couple of days off school, or work, or whatever is their daily grind. It's tempting when you have a 14 year old daughter who just randomly says she want to stay at home today. Mine did, a couple of times during her senior years. So I let her. It was two days out of approx. 5 years.

If you have a sickly child who is prone to falling to viruses, then you have to make that known to her teacher and the head of school.

Bloody Hell the UK really is turning into a police state, schools think they can make decisions about our childrens health and whether we can take them to a family funeral or on holiday.
Maybe we should just make them and birth them and hand them over to be raised in institutions by staff who won't be influenced by emotion or love.

Unfortunately this sounds more like a school worrying more about its Ofsted rating than the individual child. They are rated on attendance levels which are broken down into morning and afternoon checks. If you send her in of a morning they can check off a half a day of attendance then send her home if unwell.

I guess there is a split between working parents and stay at home. I always feel the bigger problem is working parents pushing their ill children to go to school when they should be at home resting.

For working parents someone has to take a day off work to watch a sick child in many cases so it's not a decision taken lightly.

(I'm a working parent BTW before anyone attacks me)

My 14year old daughter was having massive amounts of time off school due to terribly heavy periods, awful pain and anxiety. The amount of drs appointments and specialists and bloods shes had done has been mental! She is on five different types of medication to help, but they dont do a huge deal...
Anyway, it got to the stage where she was passing out all over the shop(anemia) and missing heaps of sch. They got really arsey, so even when she was suffering, doubled over in agony and bleeding, almost hemorrhaging, we sent her in, and said to get them to call if she needed to come home.
She got all upset and informed us they wouldnt send her home, they would just push and push it to keep her in.
We told her not to be silly, but, if that was the case and she really needed to come home to get her brother to drop us a quick text message and we would go pick her up...
Low and behold he messaged us, so we rocked up at school to collect her.
The school went NUTS because they hadn't contacted us...confiscated my sons phone, and gave her detention!!!!!

The week after I pulled her and am now home educating.
Been four weeks or so now and she is flourishing. It's great.

Schools are a joke, and in this case I'd tell them where to stick it...

Sitting at my desk with a handkerchief dosed with olbas oil pressed to my face. I didnt absorb a single syllable of any lesson

Oh my goodness! You must be traumatised! On the other hand . .

Well you, and lots of others. There were other lessons when you were fighting fit, and some others in your class were nursing snotty noses and feeling pretty shit. And not absorbing anything.
So in those lessons you were top form and they weren't.
In other lessons they were in top form and you weren't.

You only had to listen, really. Not say anything. Just listen.
It's really shitty to have a shitty cold. It makes you feel shitty.
It does not, however, affect your learning ability.

I'm 60 years old, I've had 4 children to look after so I've had big decisions to make on whether to send them in to school. Or not.
Most kids will say anything to get out of going to school. Even when they really like school, and don't have problems. They just like a break from it. A day off. It's a novel experience to stay at home when you should be at school.

It only happened once in my lifetime, when I had the Asian Flu
That was life threatening. I was only 2 years old but my parents and older brothers were taken away to the hospital to be cared for there.
My mother was distraught at the idea of leaving me. Completely utterly distraught at the idea of leaving her sick baby (me) behind, but knowing her two older boys were even more life threatened and she had to go with them,.

She left me to be cared for by her 3 close sisters. Which was brilliant!But dead lucky that she had that huge family support. Not many people, nowadays, would have that,

How can they make you?

They can't make you do anything. But they can make you do the right thing for your child.

It might be a hard slog for them, to make you tip up some cash for your child.

I'm sorry I have to say this. I don't want to say it. But you have to stop treating your kids like they'll fall apart at the first hurdle.

They have to do that falling apart thing, and lose out on stuff It's nice if your kid wins stuff. Some kids don't win anything,ever.

Think about them. Be nice to them. Bet that never occurred,,eh?

I'm so glad I don't live in the UK. I'd get a headache from all of the eyerolling.

If I want to keep my child at home, that is my decision. As a teacher, I don't want your snotty, coughing, puking kid in my classroom. You'll just make more people, probably me, sick. They don't focus and learn nothing anyway.

Please fuck off with your "they need to understand what it is like when they are grown up'. They are children, and they need to learn that their primary caregivers will support them and nuture them and make them feel safe. No child ever felt safe and secure because their parent shipped them off to school with a sick bag.

I woukdnt be comfortable with this school

Yanbu

fuck me, all these schools demanding you send them in sick or send them in to be checked that they are sick enough???
a few years ago, my sons school, of 205 students at the time, had over half the kids out sick , YES HALF THE SCHOOL, because someone sent a kid in who had not yet recovered from D & V... so over the next week kids and staff all went off sick with D & V... it was a fun time!!!!
so if you think your kid is sick keep the little typhoid Mary at home, id rather that than have half the school get infected and then bring it to every home and infect everyone there too

and
my mum once sent me to school when i said i wasnt feeling well
i said to the teacher that i wasnt feeling well and was told to sit down and get to work... later i really felt sick, i asked if i could go to the loo and was told to wait till break time and to sit down, i again said i really feel sick, she said to sit down.... i sat.... then without warning i vomited all over my desk... i was mortified... teacher was angry and i got sent home... forever embarrassed

It's really shitty to have a shitty cold. It makes you feel shitty.
It does not, however, affect your learning ability
Well that rather depends. If your child is epileptic it might trigger seizures, in my child’s case this has lead to 3/4 days in hdu, plus another 3/4 in hospital, and that’s obviously because sudden awful temperatures can be life threatening for her. So your one shitty day gives us nearly two weeks of missed school, plenty of scary unpleasant experience and frightened siblings....but crack on eh, it important for your child to snot bravely in public. After all if teaches them how to totally disregard the health of all the people they know.

We understand infection. It’s not the dark ages. Stay home and stop being twats

I'm also on the fence. Her attendance is a serious concern but doesn't sound like the school is going the best way around it!

You need to work with the school - only keep her off when it is unavoidable, unsure she is in school around appointments where you can, encourage her to catch up on work missed and provide 'evidence' of appointments etc (and no that doesn't usually mean a typed letter from the GP - but a copy of prescription or appointment card/text).

The school is probably accountable to someone else. We have accountability meetings and I have to evidence that students absences are genuine. It's not just about them not believing you (but, this process does encourage those who are not so genuine to attend more).

And no it is not up to the school to diagnose or make medical judgements: we advise parents to seek medical advice, hence asking for medical evidence to support that this is done. Because we have a responsibility for providing children an education but also safeguarding and welfare!