Anyone pull their child out of school weekly for appts?

[Anonymous]

We are working with a new therapist for ADHD and for now can only get on the schedule in the fall during the school day for appts. Do others do this and pull your child out once a week? What was the reaction from the school? We feel the therapy is necessary right now and have found someone really good so I'm torn and would love to hear how others have dealt with this. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

As a teacher, I've had parents who've done it. I don't love it, but if they need the appointment they need the appointment. My assumption is that you as a parent will make the decision that it's in the best interest of the child. If there's an opportunity to choose between a few appointment slots, it's nice to involve the teacher in choosing so she can give you thoughts on whether it's easier to make up from missing a period of reading vs. a period of science or whatever.

[Anonymous]

We did this during preK for private OT. The school was fine with it but we stopped after preK. For us, the missed class time was not worth it.

[Anonymous]

We are doing it for private pre-K this coming school year. Not sure if I would do it during school hours, though.

[Anonymous]

Only as an absolute last resort. And by third grade, never. I have a son with several serious medical issues that required weekly appointments and was able to work around school. I might have felt different if my son was a stellar student, but that wasn't our reality.

[Anonymous]

We did it. Try to get a morning or afternoon so you don't go back and forth. We were lucky to have an 8 am appointment for kindergarten. Yes, school started a 8:20. But it wasn't like he mised much. The front office was alwy very nice and knew the routine a few months in.

[Anonymous]

We picked up dd for a weekly psychologist appt in pre-k where we had to pick her up an hour early. Worth it for us.

[Anonymous]

We did this in the early elementary years. After a year or so, we were able to get into a before/after school slot. We felt the appointments were necessary and they wre treated by the school as excused absences. gotta do what you gotta do.

[Anonymous]

We do, once a week, first thing she comes in late. The school has to send us a form letter discouraging absence but both teacher and administration understand completely.

[Anonymous]

Yes, have done it for ages off and on, but won't be doing it this year. Early on it was just a slightly early pick-up for a therapy appointment, around 25 minutes before school ended. We felt that was better than trying to do an evening appointment when DS would be exhausted and something like 4 pm or even 5 pm was always booked. Then we were doing 1 afternoon a week, but they worked DS's schedule around it and he made up the work during his time with his special ed teacher and also missed a special that wasn't of particular interest anyway. This appointment we had to do in the middle of the afternoon because of traffic. It was the difference between around 2 3/4 hours per appointment with driving and more like 4.

I also try to schedule special periodic appointments such as the psychologist and developmental ped around 2 or so in the afternoon, again because of traffic. DS is fine academically and actually benefits from the occasional short days at school in terms of his lacking the emotional/physical stamina day-to-day. The school has always been very supportive and I think they appreciate that they can see exactly what we do on our side in terms of supplementing therapies he receives at school.

[Anonymous]

In kdg I picked dd up about 30 min. early for a social skills group. The school was fine with that. She was doing well academically, but really needed help with social skills.

[Anonymous]

The answer to your question really depends on the quality and frequency of the service offered by your school and whether that matches a particular child's needs. I suspect that many schools discourage taking kids out because they want to protect their own attendance records and stats. In the case of my child, who is non-verbal at 4 yrs old, I asked and the school discouraged taking her out. I'll be taking her out anyway, however, because this is the greatest area of need for my child and the school doesn't have a PROMPT trained SLP. In your case, perhaps you could ask the school to come in one day to observe the quality of OT your child is getting, then compare that with what a private OT can offer before you decide?

[Anonymous]

I would only do it for an amazing interventionist. We did it for someone who could never start appointments on time and even though the school was fine with it, my daughter was annoyed to miss school and be stuck waiting and there wasn't a great connection.

[Anonymous]

You don't say how old / what grade your child is in but an option might be to see if you can set it up durring an "extra" class (my sons school has PE twice a week, we miss one day for OT) this way he isn't missing reading or math.

[Anonymous]

yes 2x a wk early dismissal