would you take a 2nd grader out of school for a week?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I also plan to take our 2nd grader out for a week this winter. As someone who has received school awards for perfect attendance, I actually struggle with this decision. However all my friends with older children tell me they wish they had done this more, specifically before the MS/HS years.

So your friends didn't actually pull their kids out of school for vacay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also plan to take our 2nd grader out for a week this winter. As someone who has received school awards for perfect attendance, I actually struggle with this decision. However all my friends with older children tell me they wish they had done this more, specifically before the MS/HS years.

So your friends didn't actually pull their kids out of school for vacay.

PP: We have four sets of friends with older kids; our non-school confirming vacations typically revolve around winter sports. All our friends are in agreement about more family vacations being a good thing, winter sports or not (specifically before MS/HS), even if they don’t fall on school holidays. Their profiles are all different, but I don’t think the kids who were ave/above ave students were at any disadvantage for missing school.

-One family pulled their kids all the time, their DS is at the top of his class and an amazing snowboarder; DD amazing snowboarder, ok student.
-Second family never pulled kids, both ok students ok skiers
-Third family never pulled DD, amazing student, pretty good skier
-Fourth family never pulled DD, ave/below ave student, not a winter sports person.

You know your child best, but somehow one week in the second grade doesn’t seem like a big deal. I forgot to mention that my parents pulled me out of school for two months in the second grade to visit family abroad, and I still ended up at a “top tier” college. So OP, I think a week long absence would be fine.

[Anonymous]

100% YES

[Anonymous]

Two teacher family here--yes. Did it when they were 2nd and PreK, about to do it again at 4th and 1st.

[Anonymous]

Yes. School is important to us, but also during the pandemic schools showed us how flexible we could be, and how expendable they thought parents’ time was. I have pretty bitter feelings that they send Uzbek this calendar and we have to squeeze our personal and professional lives around it all

[Anonymous]

When her father retired from the military we took a 5th grader out for 10 days in Ireland (in November). It was educational and worth it.

Would I do the same for a week in the Caribbean? No.

[Anonymous]

Yep. I took my second grader out enough that the truant officer was called on me. She has difficulty missing even a day in 9th grade though. But in second, she learned far more from me than at school.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I would.

- teacher & parent

[Anonymous]

I wouldn’t, and I hope that no one who would ever complains about the quality of the US education system. The systems people like to point to as providing better educational outcomes tend to have little tolerance for unexcused absences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here. DD’s in a competitive activity that has us very busy in the summer. It would be doable to take vacation in the summer but not super easy. She’s missed one day of school ever, so I kind of think she’d be ok.

I did consider standardized testing, I need to check that. Not sure the comment about advanced classes for 3rd grade … we don’t have anything like that that I’m aware of.

I would not take a week off school because a “competitive activity” made it “not super easy” to take vacation in the summer. I just think that treats school as third on the list behind the activity and your convenience.

Op here. You must’ve missed where I said she's only missed one day of school ever. Also she’s very ahead of where she needs to be in part because I put her in private for kindergarten so she could actually go in person to learn vs learning very little from Zoom. Last year in 1st grade, I didn’t see a whole lot of hard core learning happening in May to be honest.

We’ve only been on one family vacation in her life so that’s also important to me.

In regards to her competitive activity, she doesn’t miss school for it. Also we have a signed contract regarding commitments so it’s not like we can just ignore those.

Last, she goes to a summer camp with a strong academic focus so she learns all summer too.

[Anonymous]

I have taken my kids out for a week for our trips almost every year before the oldest went to middle school. We saved a ton of money and kids never had a problem making up the work. No regrets.

[Anonymous]

I would.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. I don't think I would but I seem to be in the minority.

Parents in the DMV went nuts during the pandemic and haven't recovered. I don't think this question would have received the same responses in 2019.

+1, I learned two things during the pandemic that makes me shrug at this:

1) A huge majority of the school day is filler or social time.
2) The school’s investment in attendance is largely administrative. If my kid can be marked present because we logged into a website without interacting with the teacher, then the issue with I excused absences is not “kids aren’t learning”, it’s “we can’t account for them.” Well that’s a different proposition.

Why not take a vacation during the school year when the negative consequences are missing MAYBE two hours a day of instruction, so time with friends, and forcing the school to report that one child had an unexcused absence? None of that seems like a big deal to me.

[Anonymous]

Don’t be honest with the school about why. Made that mistake at a charter school and was told I was violating the attendance policies.

[Anonymous]

Of course!