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

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

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.

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.

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.

I have only allowed my oldest to stay home if he's not feeling well or I have something to do that is out of town and I have no choice. For example, yesterday I had to travel to pay a bill, so the options were to either take him with me or send him to school and then risk him sitting outside of our home for an hour alone. I have never let a kid miss school just because school is tough on them and they're tired. They're kids. School is their job.

Nope, if they're healthy they go - because they want to.

I did in PreK and K, but it won't happen now. I might take him out if there were something educational going on and I couldn't get him there on the weekend, but that is about it. He pretty much likes going to school so doesn't ask to stay home.

sometimes our children have day after day that are bad ,,,,,,,,
as in the are in trouble all day or do not do work well,,,,,,,,,
in a case like that I think if I were in a position to be with
my child I would do a mental health day to work on
finding the reason behind the sudden change in behavior
and performance.

My mom always let me take mental health days but my grades were good and in high school I worked at night so some days I was legitimately in need of a break. In Virginia, my son can only miss like 5 days of school a year without a note from a doctor so I won't let him do that because I don't need the resource officer at my house and he isn't the best student so missing a day would really hurt him.

When they were in Head Start and a little bit in Kindergarten MAYBE I would let them skip just cause they were tired or whatever, not actually sick days...but come on it was HEAD START where they just play most of the time. I would NOT and Have not let them take "mental health days" or "stay home just because" days now that they're in actual school. I MIGHT let my dd's when they get to the period age, because I know how much periods suck and sometimes you just want to stay home and be miserable :-/