It's Friday
The day when most children miss school. Why?
It’s Friday. The day where the most ‘persistent absentees’ miss school, according to media reports. This is often said to be because Friday is a day when many parents work from home, so they just ‘don’t bother’ getting the children to school that day.
That’s not what I hear. I hear about Friday being the hardest day, because children are exhausted after a full week of school. I hear that when children can’t sleep each night because they are worrying about school, by Friday they are in a state of complete exhaustion. I hear that the weekend provides some time to rest and reset, but that by Friday, that’s gone.
I hear that for young children, each school day requires a lot. They are with other people all day, they are expected to follow adult instruction and do what they are told. They’re told to sit on their bottoms, listen to the teacher, and control their emotions. There is no adult who has time to pay them much attention. There are too many other children for that.
I hear about it getting harder each day of the week to persuade a reluctant child into school, and by Friday it comes to a head. And I hear about attendance policies which means that there is no flexibility. No space to say that maybe they just need a bit more time to mature before they can manage five days a week. No space to acknowledge that young children learn at home too, and that life being sustainable is more important than 100% attendance.
It's Friday. Lots of children won’t be at school. Before we leap to blame them and their parents, maybe we should take a hard look at what we are expecting of our small children. Maybe we would then ask ourselves whether they are simply telling us they’ve had enough, in the only way that they can.
What happens when children aren’t fine at school? My pre-recorded course ‘My Child Isn’t Fine At School’ discusses exactly that. Why does it happen, what do adults do next and how can that make things better or worse?
You can get 50% off that course (and all my other school-related recorded courses) with the code SCHOOL50 until Sunday evening.
Please share if you know parents who might benefit.
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Who is the idiot that thinks that working from home makes it so one keeps their kids home (and who works from home mostly on Friday)?
Essentially, the kind of comments you get around EBSA are very often callous adults that can't empathise further than a can of fruit juice and only see begaviour as malicious on the part of the kids.