When Your Kid Says “I Hate School, Can I Take A Few Days Off?”: Parenting Tips for Burned Out Kids
It’s 7:12 a.m. last Monday, my whole wheat toast is burning in the toaster, the smoke alarm’s chirping because I haven’t changed the 9V battery since Christmas, and my 13-year-old Jax is leaning against the fridge in his faded Creeper hoodie, staring at his scuffed sneakers. “Dad,” he says, no eye contact, voice all flat, “I hate school so much. Can I take a few days off?”
I remember when I was 12, I asked my mom the same thing before a big math test I hadn’t studied for, and she told me no way, that skipping school is for lazy kids, that missing one day puts you behind forever. I used to parrot that to myself when Jax was little, too. But that was before two years ago, when he had a full panic attack in the car line before midterms, hyperventilating so bad we had to go to urgent care just to get him to calm down. So I turn off the toaster, wave away the smoke, and look at him. “Take even a whole week off if you need to,” I say.
He doesn’t get out of bed until 10:15 that first day. I’m working from home at the dining table, and I don’t knock on his door every 20 minutes to ask what he’s doing or remind him to get up. When he finally shuffles out, he grabs a pop tart from the pantry, flops on the couch, and turns on Zelda. I bring him a lemon soda an hour later, don’t mention homework, don’t suggest he do a “fun educational activity” instead of gaming. I just say “let me know if you want anything else” and go back to my spreadsheets.
The second day, he asks if I still need help fixing the rotted fence post in the back yard. We spend three hours digging, get cedar splinters in our palms, stop halfway to get a pepperoni pizza from the place down the street. We don’t talk about school at all. He rants about how the new Zelda update sucks, and I nod and agree.
The third day, we’re cleaning up old fence boards after lunch, and he just says it, out of the blue: The group project for social studies is garbage, he got paired with two kids who don’t do any work so he has to do everything. His best friend has been hanging out with the new kid from Texas every lunch and won’t text him back. He has three tests next week and he can’t even get through homework every night without wanting to cry. I lean on my shovel, and I don’t jump in with solutions. I don’t say “well why don’t you talk to the teacher about the project?” or “you’ll make new friends” or anything like that. I just say “that sounds really awful. No wonder you’re tired.”
A lot of parents I know say giving your kid time off when they hate school is just coddling them, that it teaches them to quit when things get hard. But I’ve learned the opposite. When a kid is that fed up, that ready to ask for time off, they’re already past the point where pushing through builds grit. They’re just burning out. Forcing them to go every day when they’re that overwhelmed doesn’t teach them to work hard. It teaches them that their body’s stop signals don’t matter, that they have to keep going even when they’re broken, just to please other people. That’s not a lesson I want my kid to learn.
From doing this twice now, I’ve picked up small, specific habits that make it work, no fancy planning required. I never require school work during time off. I’ve seen too many parents say you can take a day off but only if you do two hours of work at home, and that defeats the whole point. This is rest, not school at a different kitchen table. I email all his teachers the first day to let them know he’s out, ask what work he’ll need to make up when he comes back, and that’s it. I don’t push him to talk about what’s wrong until he’s ready. Most kids shut down if you badger them for details when they’re still raw. Just being available is enough. When he does open up, I listen first, fix later, if at all. Half the time he just wants to vent, not solve the problem that day.
I get the fear of falling behind, I had it too the first time we did this. The first time Jax took four days off, I stayed up at night worrying he’d flunk his math test. He caught up on all the missed work in two evenings after he went back, and got a B on that test. The work is never so important that it’s worth making your kid hate learning forever. I’d rather he miss a week of notes than take a year off from school after a full breakdown that could have been avoided with a few days of rest.
Today is Thursday of his week off. He’s out in the street playing kickball with the neighbor’s kid, yelling about a bad call. He came into my home office an hour ago and said he thinks he wants to go back tomorrow, instead of waiting until Monday. That’s fine with me. If he changed his mind and said he needed another two days, that would be fine too.
I don’t know if this approach works for every kid, or every family. I don’t know that Jax won’t come to me again in a couple months, after the next big project or fight with a friend, and say the same thing. That’s okay. So far, it’s working. Resilience isn’t about never stopping to rest. It’s about knowing you can step back when you need to, and that the people who love you will let you. That’s the lesson that matters more than any week of homework.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » When Your Kid Says “I Hate School, Can I Take A Few Days Off