Dependents leave

[Bones713]

Hi all,
I’ve just gone back to work (4 months now) after spending 18 years as a SAHM, my youngest is in primary school.
Two weeks ago DS had the dreaded sickness bug and both myself and hubby had to take 1 day each off to look after him, last week I came down with it but only had 1.5 days off for it. Today the school had an emergency and had to close at 8;30am so no real notice to enable me to arrange care for DS, the boss made me take annual leave for today. So in the past 3 weeks I’ve had 3.5 days off. Not good but all totally unavoidable.
I’m the only female in the office who has children so when I return to work my boss gives me the cold shoulder for a couple of days. I have offered to work from home (all I would need is a laptop) but my boss refuses to allow me to do this. My work is always completed before I leave and I have received compliments from customers and management on my work ethic, it’s just my boss that seems to have a problem with me. I sit next to him and last week we had 2 conversations about work throughout the week nothing else, but with others he chats about anything and everything. I feel very isolated from the team and so today after speaking to him and having to forward the email from the school re the closure I Requested a meeting with him to discuss things that are troubling me, and he has agreed to speak to me tomorrow about this. But I’m scared of loosing my job. How can I address this without sounding like a total loon?

Was everything fine before this last three weeks?

Other than the day you used annual leave for, were the other days unpaid?

Is there anything in your contract about dependents leave And sickness leave, I didnt think employers have to pay you for dependents leave, would annual leave be paid? ACAS have a guide to dependents ,leave which is helpful if you're not in a union. Maybe you just don't gel with your boss, it's difficult sometimes going back to work, does your contract say you can work from home, how would that be arranged and monitored.

Thanks for the responses. My contract doesn’t say anything about dependents leave but I believe you can take it but just don’t expect to be paid, which is fair enough, it is what it is. Sick leave is the normal SSP. But I physically couldn’t work in that state so if I’m not paid for it then so be it. Before this he was fine, complimentary about my work, so the only thing I can think of is the days that I’ve had to take off lately.
Lots of people in the company work remotely as long as they have a company laptop. My job can be done at home as my boss has did part my reporting it at home over the Christmas period (i’m In finance) But didn’t want to give me a laptop to do it. The only way to monitor my work is to see what has been completed. I’m not asking to work from home on a regular basis only when it’s an emergency.
I’ll look at the UCAS site and see exactly what my legal rights are. I really like the job and the company and up until now my boss. Is this what modern offices are like am I just totally reading too much into this???

**ACAS website 🤦🏻‍♀️

You are entitled to take emergency dependants’ leave, which you have done. It doesn’t sound like anyone has tried to prevent you, or penalised you in any way though? You haven’t been pulled up on it, or told you’ve taken too much?

Are you just basing this on your boss not being chatty for a couple of weeks?