Period pain proof required for school sick days

[Amallamard]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly4zd8xp74o

Aside from the utter madness about period pains (which im sure MNers will have plenty to say about), is it just me that thinks a cold can be bad enough to need time off? One of mine was off with a cold last week. They ended up on antibiotics and steroids. In no way fit for school. It's no wonder schools are such germ factories when they insist children should come in when they're ill!

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 🙄

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.

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 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

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

Well aren't you lucky.

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

How many painful periods has Graham ever had? Has he ever tried getting period pain taken seriously by a doctor? Does he even know any women?

The government guidance actually says that schools must not ask for evidence of illnesses like this.
GPs also do not want to waste time.
Parents at these schools should not pander to it and simply give the school the GPs number and send them the gov website link which states this quite clearly!

I work in a school. It is obvious which children/families have attendance issues and need extra support to help resolve it, or indeed more serious measures. Children having a couple of days off with a cold is not the issue. I'm fairly sure that if social services and children's mental health services were in a better state it would help enormously.

This is all getting idiotic though- adults are expecting to self certify to relieve pressure on GPs and the NHS because it is an absolute waste of time to take a gp appointment when you know you’ve got a bug and just can’t go to work. Expecting children to get gp sign off for school absence is an absolute waste of time and money and I would like to see heads fined for suggesting this quite frankly.

@Ozanj I can't believe you think girls should be forced to use tampons just so they can take part in a swimming lesson.
I used to use tampons and for years had dreadful internal itching. After I had my daughter I didn't go back to tampons and amazingly - no more itching.

Ffs sake, it takes years and years to even get to looking for whats wrong.
You are put off for actual years with
Oh it's normal
It will pass in a while
Shes only just started periods, they will settle down.
It's not really that painful
The very useful one I got " just go be a woman"
And on and on and on.

If there was a simple way of getting seen and diagnosed after say two years of debilitating painful periods, that would help. But as we all know, women dont matter.

I can just imagine the disruption to the learning of not only the sufferer but the entire class if one of the students spends the whole lesson on all fours on the floor rocking backwards and forwards and moaning with pain. And the doctors who just said 'everyone gets period pain, you need to just deal with it' and 'you'll grow out of it' wouldn't have been much help with medical notes either, because their diagnosis for over a decade was just 'normal period pain'.

Its very warped, how on earth does a parent prove their child has a period pain ? They must have to see a GP and get a fit note which will put up GP waiting times for appointments. Other than kids screaming in agony and being in school in a state like that no learning would get done.

Its boardroom bandits making these decisions, I think it must be motivated over money, or lack of funds when kids are off school or something like that, they value money more than the wellbeing of the kids, and adults.

Its cruel, inhumane and unethical in my opinion

Forcing anyone, let alone a teenage girl to wear a tampon or swim in a public swimming pool when on period is sick. Lots of grown women avoid either tampons or swimming for various reasons, including medical recommendations.

Yep. It's quite conceivable that a girl who's experiencing problem periods has already sought medical advice. We all know how often female anatomy problems get fobbed off and minimised.

When I was at school we had stools in Maths and Science lessons. I had such bad period pain, during a Maths lesson, that I fainted and fell off the stool. When I came too I remember the teacher telling me I’d need to learn to cope with it because I wouldn’t be able to take time off work every month. Not every woman’s periods are the same.

At the beginning of this year I had a horrible cold that went on for over 3 weeks. I felt quite unwell, but it was just a cold. I kept saying to DH that I hated feeling so ill with a cold. Sometimes you get a sniffle but sometimes you get a heavy cold. The other point is, DS2 is a severe asthmatic. When children go into school suffering from nasty colds they pass them around, which can be awful for asthmatics. DS2 would often end up in hospital because of someone else’s cold.

If a parent thinks their child is too sick for school that should be enough . The school will know if they’re taking the piss or not from their attendance record.

I would write to your MP about this. The gov rules on attendance are causing it. It’s not really an excuse because the school has totally misinterpreted it but it’s clearly not helping!
Id also ask your local Gp to write a general letter to the school to say they won’t be doing it. I mean it doesn’t even makes sense. Do they want a new letter every month? So several hundred Gp appts every month? And hundreds of letters?

Maybe they want the sanitary towels..sickos