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Parent24 : Teen 13-18 : development behaviour : Duvet days for kids

Duvet days for kids

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There’s nothing wrong with the occasional day off, even for kids, says Tracey Hawthorne.

By Tracey Hawthorne

Article originally in Parent24

My daughter, who’s in matric, asked me this morning if she could take a day off school, and I said okay.

When I was a kid, I had to practically be at death’s door to be allowed a day off school. If I – or any of my three siblings – woke up in the morning feeling off, my mother would send me to my father, who would clap an impatient hand to my forehead: if I felt feverish, I could stay at home; if my body temperature was deemed to be normal, it was off to school with me, no ifs or buts.

During my 12 years of schooling, there were at least a dozen times when I didn’t want to go to school but wasn’t ill, as a result of which I became an inveterate bunker – which obviously involved lying to my parents and teachers.

For the first few years of my own kids’ schooling, I followed my parents’ example: bona-fide illness was the only reason they could stay off school. This had partly to do with my very real need for time without small kids around to get stuff done – work, household chores, etc.

But when my kids got older, sometimes I would let them take a day off just because they wanted to. I wouldn’t always enquire too deeply into their reasons – remembering my own, sometimes spurious ones when I was younger, I thought I’d spare them the need to lie to me by pretending to be sick.

On these occasions, I’d sometimes skive off too. Then we’d get DVDs, make popcorn, and hang out on the sofa for the morning; or, if the weather was warm, we’d take the dogs for a long walk or go swimming. Some of the best quality time I spent with my kids were on these illicit little holidays.

While I’m not advocating that kids play hooky, with or without their parents’ permission, whenever they feel like it, even in grown-up land employees can put in for a day’s leave when they just don’t feel up to going to work. In fact, a British PR firm introduced ‘duvet days’ in the late 1990s as ‘a perk for the pooped’, so that people who couldn’t face work didn’t have to lie about their absence or feel guilty about calling in ‘sick’ (according to wordspy.com).

So why shouldn’t fed-up kids get time off as well?

Read more by Tracey Hawthorne