Bunking off

Small Fry has been very ill for several days. As The Kid seemed slightly off-colour Sunday, I kept her home yesterday in case she was heading the same direction as her sister. I'm sure the school would have agreed with this decision, not that I asked their opinion. As it turned out, she bounced cheerfully around the house all day yesterday, and I had decided to send her to school today.

Late last night, I changed my mind. Taking her to school would have meant waking the little one, who desperately needs her sleep. She's been up often in the night, sleeps late, and takes at least three naps a day at the moment. Then there would be the problem of preventing Small Fry from puking all over the car when she's not yet old enough to wield a sick bucket while I drive. I might stop her from being sick by withholding water from her, but that seems cruel. And she's so ill she can't keep down her essential prescription medicine, so I was considering taking her to hospital for it to be injected. We might still be there when school finished. If I'd been in hospital with one child all day, I really didn't want to have to think about how to fetch the other one back from school. The Kid would stay home today for her sister's sake.

Of course there were other alternatives to keeping The Kid off school. I could cheek a relative, friend or slight acquaintance to take her to school or let her come round for a few hours after school until her dad could collect her after work. This seems to be the Done Thing in such cases. A sibling's illness is not generally considered a good enough reason to keep a child home from school. Education is important, after all. One has to make an effort.

My priorities are entirely different. School, to me, is just some place to go for a change of scenery and a bit of exposure to something different. It's an unfortunate quirk of the system that it is so all-or-nothing, that choosing to use school puts parents in the position of breaking the law whenever they keep children off school without permission. Having seen how well my daughter can learn without school, I find it hard to see the urgency of sending her to school on days when it's very inconvenient. Disturbing an ill toddler in order to deliver her big sister to school is almost inconceivable to me now.

I've learned a useful lesson from the school runs this term: I'm just not committed enough to take my daughter to school day in, day out year after year. I've often been tempted not to take her, simply because I couldn't be bothered, though today was the first day I'd actually failed to do so. If we were in this for the long haul, I could imagine myself finding more and more excuses to keep her off school. Whenever she wants to go to school again, as she probably will at some point during high school, she'll have to be able to get herself there without my help. Next time, she'll go to the local school. No more school runs for me.

Have I always been this lazy, or has the flexibility of home education made me lazy? I don't know. It's hard to remember how the world looked to me in those ancient days when I thought school might matter.