In article ,
dragonlady says...

In article ,
Banty wrote:

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.

Banty


No need to get snotty to me; I was merely pointing out that the 4 days
of Thanksgiving break is not always enough time to visit family when a
family visit is necessary. Sometimes, family is a LONG way off.


It's frustrating to hear the "yeah buts". People say "its FAMILY time, and we
CAN'T DO IT OTHERWISE IT'S TOO EXPENSIVE" Well, *any* trip with parents can be
said to be 'family time', and "we can't do it otherwise" too often means "we
can't do this trip and the one we already have planned for summer and get the
deck built this year and...and..."

The thing is, if such requests were true (dying relative), and truly cannot be
done on the 365-180 days a year, they'd be rare requests. People and
institutions are willing to make way for rare requests. Think of approaching
your boss for 1 day's sanity time if you've only taken off 3 days the past three
years, vs. approaching your boss for 1 day's sanity time if you've taken off 20
days in the past two months. The OP could do her visit before Thanksgiving, few
questions asked, because the OP would not have had other absences, and teachers
wouldn't have already had it up to here with the 'we gotta visit grandma once a
month so we'll be taking off two days every month for family time Hey It's
Family' and similar stuff. Privelege extended and not abused.

Since my kids started school, I have not been faced with a need to make
a trip home to see a dying relative one last time. I have NOT gone home
for my father's surgeries, though had they not gone well I might have.
However, I have had friends in that position: when a call comes that
says Mom or Dad are terminal, and only expected to live another three
months at best, I, for one, would be hard pressed to criticise someone
for taking their kids out of school for a few days to see them one last
time. If they try to use a llong weekend (and that's all Thanksgiving
break really is) to minimize the time away from school and still make
the visit long enough to make sense I think that's probably a good idea.

The winter break may well be pushing it too far off, plus that can be an
extremely difficult (and more expensive) time to try to travel with kids.


Sure, it can happen for real where you'd really have to go. That would be a
relatively rare event - the kind people and institutions normally would be
inclined to accomodate. But if its because otherwise it'd be 'more expensive'??
Hey, since the school breaks are peak travel times ('cause of the rest of us
poor honest slobs who actually do try not to take our kids out of school,
y'know), it can ALWAYS be said that it would be more expensive not to take the
kids out of school for non-peak travel times. Most certainly not a rare case.
So I'm not convinced by that, and I dont' blame schools for not being convinced
by that.

Banty