The Exhausted Dad: When illness reigns, attendance not required
The judgmental automated voice from the school district keeps calling me.
“THIS CALL IS TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR CHILD WAS ABSENT. PLEASE CALL BACK TO PROVIDE THE REASON FOR YOUR CHILD’S ABSENCE.”
Technically, I wouldn’t receive these automated calls if I remembered to call the schools’ attendance lines BEFORE my children get marked absent. “Excusing” the absence works off the honor system too. You can just say your kid is sick and that’s the end of the inquiry.
But I keep getting these calls because my kids have been sick so often this year that I genuinely forget which kid I’ve called in, what day and … wait, is that kid home from school today? Let me go check … Shoot, OK, please hold this column. I need to call in the third grader …
Seriously, since the start of this school year, my four kids have had almost every illness in circulation. COVID? Check, times four. Cold with sore throat and stuffy nose? Check, times eight. Random “walking pneumonia” virus with weekslong cough? Check, times four. Influenza? Check, times two, and please hold for future results. I’m not even counting my wife and my ailments, which also include those wonderful age 40-appropriate conditions such as “back pain” and “migraine” and “general middle-age malaise.”
I appreciate how absences for younger children are acceptable so long as the parents consent to it and their education hasn’t been too impaired. Last week, my wife and I attended a parent-teacher conference for our 11-year-old son. Good thing the conference went well, because the kid had missed five of the last seven school days. I’m so proud of the educational progress of my little Patient Zero!
My middle schooler has been maintaining her grades too, despite missing more days than any other year prior, kindergarten included (one major consequence of being a stay-at-home parent is all the germs they collect in kindergarten after avoiding so many of them at day care).
Still, I’m annoyed by the general practice of encouraging “perfect attendance.” Back when I was young, the schools would celebrate the “perfect” kids while us sickies with better grades sat on the sidelines applauding their callous spread of various viruses and bacteria.
In high school, I remember having fewer chances to win a brand-new car because I caught the flu, probably from the perfect attendance winner of that car!
As adults, we’re punished for being sick, too. My graduate program MANDATES a high attendance rate … and yet they want us to stay away with our COVID symptoms. You can’t have it both ways!
I get it that people “fake” being sick, and that the world must spin on despite the abundance of vomit-inducing viral infections. But if you’re sick, you should stay home and keep your germs to yourself! Employers and schools should be understanding.
Unfortunately, by doing the right thing by keeping my kids home, I’m getting quadruple exposed to their sniffles, coughs, sneezes and other secretions. I feel safer from infection sitting in a crowded theater for “Wicked” than I do sitting in my own living room.
• • •
Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer, full-time student, and parent to four kids, ages 7-13. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.
The Exhausted Dad
