S/O from the home page story 'Do you let your kids take Mental Health days from school'

Actually when my children were in school and now with DGS My kids knew that if they could make it through school to the third quarter without a sick day. They could choose one and only one day off. The proviso was thet there could be not test and all homework had to be done to be turned in, so it wasn;t a skip because I didn;t study or do my work. They could schedule it how ever fat in advance, say they wanted to do something on a certain day.

They knew they could use it. Most years they just never did but always thanked me for letting them know they had it available.

ive done that with my DD but its pre-K and her teacher has told me (many times) that she's one of the smartest in the class. and as a future teacher it upsets me to think about parents pulling their kids outta higher levels of school unless its a real reason. i get education events, but schools usually jump on those if they are big enough.

but i like Dard's idea...that insures that they are up to speed in school, plus the 3rd quarter doesnt have any days off (unless you go thru Memorial Day) so it can get over-whelming.

It hasn't come up with my child (only one is in school; my youngest pair are preschool age but don't attend preschool.) But I have heard that kids KNOWING that if needed, they could take a day "just because," can build their resilience & strength. I think it makes sense. Feeling forced or trapped in the compulsory sense, that you "have" to do something (there is no choice), can be really lousy & reinforce an internal negative spiral. When a person recognizes a degree of her own autonomy/choice in a situation, even an unpleasant/undesirable one, she feels a lot more emotional freedom. There's room to find & marshal internal resources, that way.
There've been times when my child (who likes school!) really REALLY didn't feel like going/getting ready in the morning. Holding (within myself) the space that she COULD take a day if she really needed to kept me from emphasizing "you HAVE to go" in response & let me hear her. She went.

Wow. That's new. I only had one day in my entire high school (and school career total, now that I think about it) that I actually took of just because. It was a day me and my best friend skipped because we were seniors and good girls, so we decided to have one bad girl day. We choose a day with no tests or anything, so we didn't really miss anything important and most of the rest of the class had skipped that day to, For my kids, the only times they miss school is if they are truly sick or we are having a major family crisis (like I will take them out of school for the day of my dads memorial, if we do it on a school day). Otherwise, they are there.
-Ashley