"Banty" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dragonlady
says...

In article ,
Penny Gaines wrote:

Banty wrote in :

Amazing what use can be made of summer and spring and holiday and
other
breaks.
Say - Thanksgiving break is coming right up in a scant few weeks!
What a
wonderful time to visit a family member who may not be with the world
much
longer.

Doesn't that depend on whether you think the relative will still be
around
for Thanksgiving? If they are really ill, maybe that four weeks is too
long
to wait.

I would add that the four days we got off for Thanksgiving might not be
enough time. At least for me, getting TO my relatives takes a full day
and costs a lot of money; spending the $$ to spend only two days there
is problematic. However, by adding 3 days out of school and work, one
could travel on a Saturday, stay for a full week, and travel back on a
Sunday.

Oh - well, yanno what? Need more travel time?? Just sooo happens that
the VERY
NEXT MONTH, right after the 5 day Thanksgiving break, there's whooooole
long
two-week - what do they call it now? - WINTER HOLIDAY break. Very handy
for
those longer trips, unless said relative truly is at death's door.

Sorry to be snide, but there's ALWAYS going to be reasons like this that
people
give that they just haaaave to take the kids out now or this-or-that won't
work
out just as conveniently as can be.

If it's important, you work around it.

Maybe said relative really should have been visitied in August. Death's
door
ain't exactly the time to make those last connections anyway in just about
all
but immediate-family cases. But, hey, since some folks think they can
take the
kids out just ANY time, why bother to have planned that.

When the reasoning gets weak, it's apparent that this is rationalizing
that's
going on. Some families will do whatever, whatever the consequences, and
that's
the problem.

You're right that we'll do this whatever the consequences. And I don't
think that's the problem. The problem is that a school feels they have the
authority to second-guess the decisions we are making for our family. Who
is the parent? Who has to decide what is in the best interest of this
child?

I don't think the school should be privy to the details of our family life
so *they* can *decide* whether our choice is, what, adequate? We had
planned to visit last summer but the effects of treatment were pretty bad
then. Now she is between treatments--her doctor is very agressive and will
start another round of chemo/radiation. This is the time. You don't plan
illness, or death. Maybe she will recover. You know, that is our hope.
That is our prayer. But we will see her, and her 6 yo daughter, before she
starts this next round of treatment. I can't imagine a family thinking
twice about this. To avoid truancy, eh? To save the teacher from the
difficulty of recordkeeping, eh? How do you judge the school to be so
all-knowing about what is best for my child and my family? I think that is
arrogant. I hope this slice of life on the internet is not representative
of what people believe.

I think the snobbery about people's decisions to go ski-ing, or to
Disneyland, is ridiculous too. You don't know what is best for that family.
Maybe they are working at saving their marriage. Maybe they are
reconnecting as a family. Our first trip to Mexico was instigated
suddenly--my folks decided to take my older sister away from her peer group.
She had started doing drugs and was running with a bad crowd. We were away
for a month in a foreign culture with none of the old distractions. It
worked. My sister figured out what was important, and what was not so
smart, and when we returned North, she started fresh, with a new group of
friends, and a new attitude. My *parents* decided what they thought would
work, and hey, it did. I can just hear the snobbery if parents did that
today--"Oh, that family thinks they are so special, they can just pull their
kids out of school for two weeks and go to Mexico. Who do they think they
are? Don't they think about what's best for their kids? Their poor
teachers. Send them the truancy letter. Fine them." Oh enough. The
parents and the kids live with their life choices. Not the teacher. When
does the state, the school, have the authority to step in? I don't believe
in totalitarian government. The arguments I hear here are not about what is
best for the child, and mostly not about education. They are about
recordkeeping, testing, grading, minor inconvenience... loss of total
control by the school. Small potatoes.