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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What age/grade?  What school system? 
[/quote]

tween. rather not say. public.[/quote]

My DD had a serious concussion in MS. We thought she was recovered and sent her back to school, but we missed the subtle signs that she was not fully recovered -- difficulty with attention, mood lability, sensitivity to light and sound, trouble following multi-speaker conversations, and subtly difficulties with language.  Balance was also a major clue.

IMO, you are doing the right thing by insisting on rest.  This is the general medical advice.  It was also our personal experience that doing too much cognitive work too early set back recovery.  Thus, your doctor's advice to go back for half days at first.  There is some research supporting cognitive rest, but there was a recent paper by DeGioia (from the Children's Hospital SCORE clinic) that strict rest for more than a couple days maybe wasn't so helpful.  See here -- http://childrensnational.org/news-and-events/childrens-newsroom/2015/concussion-expert-weighs-in-on-study

That said, I'd go with whatever your doctor is telling you because he knows your child and your child's facts/symptoms.

Based on our experience in MCPS, I'd say some schools are more cooperative than others on concussions.  Some schools will just waive as much work as they can and let your child move on whenever they're ready to return.

Other schools really don't get it and can make life miserable (we were at the latter).

Get the doctor to write a medical note detailing the recovery (week off gradual return after that, advises that since it's the end of the year, as much work be cut as possible).  It's middle school, so there's not much that's too important. If you're happy with your child's grades, I'd ask the school if they can just waive any remaining work and give him/her whatever grade they currently have.  If you're not happy, then ask for an extension to make up the work.  At a minimum, your child is entitled to 1 make up day for each day that they are not able to be in class.

If your child takes any HS classes in MS (like math at Algebra or above level or any foreign language) then the school might give you a harder time.  The bottom line here is that any work at the school level (unit tests, quizzes) can be waived at the discretion of the teacher or school.  The final exam can also be waived, but that might require someone higher than the principal to approve.  Or, you can ask for any necessary accommodations -- extra time, a scribe, more frequent breaks, etc. rather than just waiving requirements.   Teachers might recognize the idea of "teaching to core objectives," which means cutting as much unnecessary work as possible and just getting the kid to demonstrate once that they have the concept.  This means a teacher could cut a unit test, if the child already took quizzes covering the same material or vice versa, doing just a couple of each problem type rather than a whole page, etc.

For our child, we really wanted to avoid extending school, so we tried to get the school to waive as much work as possible.

If your school is really uncooperative, you might have to take the doctor's note and make a formal request for a 504 plan, which frankly will take a lot more time and energy than is necessary at the end of the year holding meetings, etc.

Frankly, our experience was a nightmare and we had to call in an advocate and attorney, because DC's concussion happened in the first half of the school year.

If you live in MCPS and you have any problems, I urge you to contact the county-wide 504 supervisor ( a federally-mandated position) and complain that accommodations for medical disability are not being made.  Once we did that our problems were solved overnight.

FWIW, I think our concussion experience was not the norm -- many kids we know have recovered just fine in a few days or a week -- but it was also DC's 3rd concussion.  Our school was also not the norm.  [/quote]

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