Would you have made him go?

Both of my kids have woken up crabby before. It's usually after them staying up past bed time and playing/reading instead of going to sleep. It's not MY fault they chose to do something they know they're not supposed to do instead of going to sleep.

Would they still have to go to school? YES
Do they get to stay home? NO (One condition: we sometimes have these stupid furlough days where the kids are in school for 2 hours. I MIGHT let them stay home on days like that)

I ended up cuddling him on the kitchen floor. We talked about what he learned yesterday and how he would miss out learning something new today. He felt a bit better and off he went.
But as a mom I still felt pretty rotten making him go.

Comment by SleepingBeautee

I think it's desirable for the initiative or willingness to come from within them (because they went through their feelings & then adjusted to the point of finding some internal resolution) rather than being "enforced" from outside. We tend to enforce things out of fear (if we don't, then they still might not want to go "and then what?!") so we end up injecting struggle/opposition into things pre-emptively, because what if they DON'T reach internal resolution or become willing to go? But then we (and they) miss out, and the dynamic of being "made" to do things gets reinforced.

Sounds like you've got a good hunch about what's up, re: enough sleep.

If he had gone to bed and slept well and had no other reason to be crabby and not feeling well then yes he would stay home, but only because twice we have sent my son to school saying he was tired etc and then got a call that he puked at school and 3 times we have allowed him to stay home after same complaint only to have him puke later also. My son is not one to ask to stay home so when he does we allow it. Every time there was no fever and no other signs of sickness until he puked.

If he did not have a fever no. Later in life we will have to go to work or something else that we don't want to do or are to tired, crabby etc. We have to learn that that is not an excuse not to follow through on our responsibilities. JMO.

As long as he isn't sick, he goes to school. The only exception I have made was the couple of nights he got about 2 hours of sleep and couldn't function the next day.

If he's not sick I would have sent him bc once he knows you fall for it the first time he will continue to act this way...so you did good ;)

It would have depeneded on how many days he had stayed home this year. If it was a lot I would defintly make him go because even at times kids will see how far they can push you because when your little I guess school is just not fun. I would have made him go.