Two nights ago, Jonah woke up at 2:30 am and puked up his guts. He did the same thing at 3 am, 4:15, and 6. It was a garden variety stomach bug. He was feverish and nauseous for 24 hours. Now, he’s weak, but on the mend. Yesterday, I kept him company on the sofa and watched superhero movies in the afternoon. Today, I’m yelling at him to drink and eat and get back on his feet.
It’s really not a big deal. He’s 14, and he has a stomach bug. Well, it shouldn’t be a big deal, but it is. He’s missing two days of school the week before mid terms. His teachers are cramming in the last assignments of the term. He’s had about a dozen tests and quizes and papers in the past two weeks. Six hours of homework. We want to make sure that he maintains his A’s in English and History, so he can get into the special program for Sophomore year. We’re all worried that he’ll never be able to make up all the work that he missed and the teachers will mark his work late. There’s bound to be lots of back-and-forths between us and teachers to make sure that they input the make up grades properly. He’ll have to take up a make-up geometry test after school, as the teacher taps her foot and looks at the clock, so she can run out to get her kid from daycare.
This is insane. A kid should be able to be sick for a day or two without that fear of putting in two all-nighters to finish missing homework and assignments.
Steve needs to go to the dermatologist. He’s need to go for about a year, but keeps putting it off, because it’s too hard to figure out when to go. He doesn’t get any sick days or personal days to schedule these appointments. He is expected to burn a vacation day to attend to these matters.
Nobody is allowed to be sick anymore. We live in a world that expects robots, not fragile humans.
Apt. 11d 
My husband was formally chastised at his last job for using “too many” of his sick days, even though he was still under what he was allowed to take. The implication was even though they were technically given that many sick days, no one should actually take that much time off work.
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Husband started a new job in the new year, Tummy bug hit here hard. Thankfully he works from home/travels and it was a work from home week, so he sat in the office and suffered. Nothing worse than being sick 1 week into work. The new job’s vaca/personal time is atrocious, luckily he’s a sales guy and negotiated up a week. During his HR paperwork, the HR person couldn’t believe he got an extra week of vaca. He was made to promise, in his offer letter!, not to tell anyone in the entire company. Yup, Illness and personal lives, not allowed.
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I wonder if stepping back a bit would help. Let Jonah work out make-up schedules with his teachers and make sure his grades go in right. Step in if you must if his grades actually drop too far to be admitted into the program (or recognize that it really isn’t that big of a deal if he’s not in it). Worrying about dire consequences that are really pretty unlikely is not going to help any of you.
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This seems like the right thing to do in a situation like this but is probably hard to implement in reality. I’m sure if I was in Laura’s situation I would have to actively hold myself back from intervening even though I knew it was the right thing to do.
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I have to get involved. Last year, he missed 4 days of school because of illness. Between highly distracted teachers and the awkward social skills of a teenage boy, shit happened. The teachers fucked up the grading and rushed him through assignments/tests. Jonah didn’t know how to properly advocate for himself. He got really stressed out. It was a HUGE mess.
This is only 2 days off and he’s able to stand up to teachers better, so I won’t have to get super, super involved, but I’ll have to keep an eye on people.
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No offense, but I’m still not seeing the worst case scenario here as being all that bad. Being rushed through a few tests in eighth grade made for a tough week last year, not a serious problem. Let Jonah “keep an eye on people” if he’s worried about particular things not being recorded right. (If he’s not worried about it, then you probably shouldn’t be either.) Consider letting him ask for your help only if he runs into trouble, instead of assuming you have to get involved.
I stressed a lot in school about doing everything right and believing that if I f’ed up any particular thing it could be The End and I’d never have the life and career I wanted. I was around 25 when I finally realized that wasn’t true… there are additional entry ramps to nearly every path well after high school. Screw up high school and can’t go to a good college? Kick ass in community college and transfer. Screw up college? Work for a few years and go back when you’re older if you want to, or focus on another path entirely. I feel like that’s the most important thing I can teach my kids (who are 9 and 13 and good at school so I don’t have to fret about the same things people with kids with different learning experiences do). They are in high achieving public schools and pick up on the “I have to get good grades or the world will come to an end!” stress and I’m doing my best to counteract it rather than inflate it even more.
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I have 70 sick days even after staying home for our own bout with a vomiting child. It was bad enough that we called the doctor and the doctor told us that we were being too aggressive about fluids. There was a whole schedule with water being doled out by the teaspoon until it would stay down. The vomiting was far less traumatic (for me) than the anguished cries for water.
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I know that countries like Canada have the “bad” reputation of being a nanny state where the government is involved in everything. It just seems so cruel not to allow adequate sick days. And that choice seems to come from a belief that if you have universal health care or enough sick days, suddenly everyone will quit their jobs and loaf around day after day.
That seems much more “nanny state”-ish, to not trust that the majority of a population wants to be gainfully employed.
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I work in Canada and our sick days are capped at 5/year, and you can’t accrue them.
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We’re pretty lucky as we get 4 weeks of PTO at my company and we are required to use it all annually. It helped a lot when we switched from a separate vacation and sick time program since this shut up all the anti child whiners who were sure that they were “subsidizing” those with families who took sick days when their kids were sick.
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Last night S was studying for a midterm, and she had my husband going through a bunch of biology stuff with her. She was exceptionally weak in one area that she didn’t understand. She had missed that *one* class (the only bio class she had missed) because of a band trip (to play Christmas music at the local mall). So I guess I’m saying I can see how missing even a day of high school can get problematic pretty quickly.
I’m lucky because S is an Iron Woman (didn’t miss a single day of school last year but didn’t get a perfect attendance award because I took her out of school early a couple of days for various dentist or doctor appointments), and E lives with the constant sniffles. Usually by the time we figure out it’s a cold, not allergies, it’s over. My kids are not, thank the FSM, pukers.
You know, come to think of it, we get officially 10 sick/personal days, but I took all 10 only once (the year E was diagnosed with asthma and we hadn’t figured out how to manage it yet). I’m discouraged from missing too many classes. I don’t get sick very often, so that’s not a problem, and I’m realizing that now I could totally work around my schedule and not stay home if E got sick.
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Last term, C had a big role in her 6th grade musical. She was doing very well, right up until about 24 hours before the big show, which was when her temperature started going up. I sent an email to the drama teacher around that time, warning that she might not be able to perform (I’m not totally sure he got that email, as I didn’t get a response). On the day of the show, C came home complaining of headache and she had a temperature of 101 or 102 (or something like that). Two other members of the households had already recently started antibiotics. We decided she should not perform and I emailed the teacher about two hours before show time (given school pick up times, emailing earlier would have been impossible). I then got an email from the teacher (which I didn’t see in time) asking C to go on as well as a phone call from the principal asking if she couldn’t perform even with a fever. It’s a team effort, we don’t want to let the others down, she could come a little late, the principal could give her a ride, etc. I consulted with my husband and we decided not to do it. (The email from the drama teacher, which I only saw later was about how they’d been working all term, C had been given this big role, so the show must go on, etc. Well, I certainly did not ask for C to be given a “big role.”)
It was a very dicey thing, as C often gets mild fevers that don’t go anywhere. However, this time, as it happened, it was not a minor thing at all. She had a 104 degree temperature the next day, a 105 degree temperature the day after that, and on the second of two doctors’ visits, she had a positive swab for strep. By this time, baby sister was starting to get seriously sick, too, so 4 out of 5 of us wound up on antibiotics–presumably all 4 of us were having some sort of go round with strep.
I made a point of emailing the drama teacher and the principal short daily updates with regard to C’s temperatures and her positive strep result.
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I can sympathize with your need to oversee. Here in NY I had to find out the official rules so that teachers could not mark assignments late or were required to give alternate assessments due to a documented illness. In high school the teachers would not pay attention to the student re an excused absence and the ability to make up work without penalty.
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