Let’s face it there are tons of things that they forgot to tell me about being a parent (or adult for that matter!) Some of those include: that rarely if ever would it be all about lunching with the ladies and playing tennis; there would be a whole lot more tears from me than the kids; that even when they draw on the walls you will eventually see the funny side; that the toddler years are really just a warm up for puberty! Seriously there is probably not enough paper in the world to cover the things they forgot to tell me! My biggest complaint today is kids and sickness!!
Not sure about you, but school days for me meant going ALL DAY! They also meant that unless you had you know cut an arm off or were actually in hospital you also wentto school! Don’t even get me started on the Pupil Free Days. We didn’t even have them until I was in Year 10 in 1986!
By virtue of the fact that my mum kept all my school reports I can actually see how many days off I had in my 13 years at school. Up until I went into High School I had 7 days off school, those 7 days were from a time that we as a family headed home to Australia for a family wedding when we were living in Fiji. Then in the next 6 years I had 4 actual days off and 26 days off when again my parents took us on a family holiday to Disneyland, UK & Europe in 1985. One of those 4 days was actually a day I wagged school and I got caught so Mum sent me to school with a note saying I had the day off without her permission!
My kids on the other hand seem to never be at school. I think they have 5 or so Pupil Free Days give or take. These aren’t such a huge deal really. I totally get the need for them, seriously I do, teachers do so much and to have the odd day a term for some professional development, school wide programming etc is really important. Don’t even start that teachers should do this during school hours because frankly as a former teacher you won’t get any support from me. Teachers are worth their weight in gold! 
No my kids seem to never be at school because they are always sick!!! Seriously I don’t know what it is that I am doing (or not!) but they just seem to get sick all the bloody time. According to my journals two were home sick last Monday, then three on Tuesday then we managed to get them off to school for the rest of the week.
Here we are just one week later and we have two home again! Yesterday I had an appointment in the morning and from my notes prior to heading off to school we had one feeling unwell sore tummy, weak legs, honestly from what I have written down this sounded much like feeling anxious about heading to school. So off to school they went with the proviso they could come home if they were unwell. Sure enough, as I was leaving my appointment Hubby called to say he was heading to bring someone home.
Just to be sure they headed to the after hours dr (though we always forget about our Radio Dr service I don’t know why we don’t use that). There was nothing sinister in the ears or throat which is typically where our kids (probably all kids!) get sick. She did however present the Dr with a vomit in his rooms, the poor little mite then proceeded to vomit all night long. Thanks to a great Hubby I slept through it all and a crap memory I don’t remember what happened before I went to sleep.
Clearly she was in no fit state to head to school, so I cancelled my outing for this morning and we stayed home. Sending only two to school! By 10.30am Hubby had a phone call to say “please come and pick up number 2 she’s sick as well!” And just like that I was at home with two sick kids both with the dreaded tummy bug! Hubby went to head back to work until he had a call from his boss telling him to stay home and clean the toilet! (I am still waiting for that to happen!)
I guess because I rarely had a day off school, I went to school once after I had warts burnt off the top of my foot I had third degree burns!!! I didn’t even get crutches! I am not saying we were any tougher or life was harder, though clearly there was some tough love around having days off school.
Thing is there is no real point in sending sick kids to school because we always get a phone call to go and pick them up.
Why is it that I was never prepared for all the time my kids would have off school and how sick kids get!
Is there anything that they forgot to tell you about having children?