It seems there is a disconnect somewhere at our school.

This past week has been a trying one at best, dealing with illness, sending kids to school, keeping them home then sending them back.

The flu bug we’ve had has been unpredictable and pretends to leave entirely but then within twelve hours of disappearing, comes back in a mutated form.

I figured if the kids were sick last weekend, keeping them home from school on Monday because they weren’t 100% just made sense.

But by Tuesday, they both sprung out of bed, got dressed, ate breakfast and were eager to find out what they had missed from the day before.

Ellie returned home on Tues. afternoon telling me she started to feel pretty awful just after lunch but she didn’t want to call home. When I asked her why, I got a series of reasons.

1)      When you want to call home, you have to go to the office and explain why you want to go home.

Okay, can you tell them, “I feel sick?”

Ellie: No.

2)      Then they ask you if you tried to go to the bathroom.

Hmmm. I guess that’s so they don’t have kids calling home every day whenever the mood should strike but I think given her absence on Monday, due to illness, one need not question why she wasn’t feeling ready to stay on for a whole day of instruction or ask if she was interested in a trip to the loo.

3)      Then they ask if you tried to eat something.

Okay, I see they’re trying to use their medical backgrounds covering all possible scenarios with the bathroom and food connection and maybe there are parents who are grateful that this “ruling out” approach might spare them from picking up a child who just really needed a cracker.

I guess my feeling is, if a child is willing to tell their teacher, I think I need to go home and go up to the office to have someone call a parent to pick them up, do you not think we’ve graduated beyond crackers?

4)      Then they tell you to wait in the front lobby for a while to really think about whether or not you want to call home.

This one bothers me. I think if the child goes to the office to make the call in the first place, they’ve already thought about it plenty. It feels a little like the child is being punished like, “You go and sit in that ‘maybe we’ll call, maybe we won’t’ chair over in the corner reserved for kids who didn’t try going to the bathroom or eating a cracker before asking for a ride home.”

5)      Sometimes you just stand there before you ask anyone to call home and nobody talks to you so you stand there for a really long time. It’s uncomfortable and it would be better just to sit at my desk with my head down. Except when I sit at my desk with my head down, my teacher asks me if I want to go home and I do but I don’t know how to get someone to phone you.

So I kept Ellie home on Wednesday to continue to rest and battle whatever form of this virus that was still kicking around and also to drill her on the answers she can give next time if the second she asks to call home the person on the other side of the desk doesn’t immediately start dialing.

By Thursday, again, she was ready to go to school, felt well rested and was tired of missing those valuable days of grade one.

She said she was spoken to about “cubbying” which is apparently when a child lingers in the cubbie area when they are supposed to be outside.

Cubbying.

Huh.

I understand that some (or maybe all of this) is parent driven and has been fine tuned after years of starving, constipated kids accidentally went home early because nobody thought to walk them through the “Five Steps of Calling A Parent” now laminated under someone’s desk in the office.

I just think with a little compassion, we can make it easier on the little ones who are already feeling lousy and can’t stand up for themselves the way an adult would if you publicly questioned their bathroom and snacking habits.